Pendley, Wm mslf

MERRI OK

SEE BAK

SEE PJT 2025MANDY MCNAMEE

NEUTRA;IZE CAPTURE AGY, MOVE HQ PROTO SCHED F

not exactly zombie b/c no scandal resignation? more like herpes virus that goes latent till eruption?

what has he been up to?

BOUNDARY WATERS MINING

pendejo

---

AHA yikes RR nostalgia gipper, but massive dereg now under cover of?

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/7/28/global_heat_climate_crisis_july_2023

...

DAVID WALLACE-WELLS: Well, I mean, the short answer is, to limit all of these impacts, we need to reduce carbon emissions very rapidly. And while we have had an incredibly impressive renewable rollout over the last couple of years, all of the graphs are pointing way up. The next decade looks much more promising for renewable energy than most advocates even believed was possible just a few years ago. Nevertheless, they’ve barely dented, if they’ve dented at all, the emissions that we’re producing from fossil fuel generation. So we haven’t actually reduced the share of global power production that comes from fossil fuels from this remarkable renewable rollout. We’re just using those renewables to add to our power capacity.

And that’s really, you know, the change that we need to make. We need to be producing so much renewables now that we can actually draw down fossil fuels, and draw them down relatively rapidly, rather than simply using them to supplement our consumption patterns and power production. And unfortunately, we haven’t really seen a sign of that. At best, it looks like we’re going to be looking at sort of a plateau for emissions over the rest of this decade. And we know from all of the scientific warnings that that’s simply inadequate if we have any hope of meeting some of our more ambitious climate targets.

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, David, I want to ask you about what would be the most effective legislation in the United States to deal with climate change. But, Dharna Noor, I wanted to first go to your piece. If you can explain what Project 2025 is and what you found in your investigation?

DHARNA NOOR: Absolutely. So, Project 2025 is, essentially, a group of dozens of right-wing organizations. We’re talking about think tanks, publications and the like. And it was convened by the Heritage Foundation, which is, I think, in the climate world, very well known for promoting climate denial for decades, and for even longer promoting this sort of anti-regulatory stance. So, these groups came together in an attempt, essentially, to advise whoever the next president is, if that person is a Republican, so any Republican who takes office in next year’s presidential election.

This is the second time that the Heritage Foundation has led the creation of a sort of transition plan aimed at a Republican president. In the early ’80s, we saw the Heritage Foundation create one of these plans, that actually went on to have a huge influence on the Reagan administration and was framed as a sort of way of taking on the out-of-control regulatory state.

And in this particular iteration, there’s a lot of focus in their new transition plan on unmaking environmental regulations. I’m happy to talk more about this, but there’s a number of previous Trump appointees who have written, essentially, proposals to undo the many powers of the federal administration, from the EPA to the Department of the Interior, all in an attempt to sort of lessen the federal authority to regulate fossil fuels and, essentially, to boost those polluting industries.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. Polls show now that Biden and Trump, even though he was indicted again yesterday, are neck and neck in the polls for president. You talk about the Department of the Interior part of the plan, in this 2025 plan, being written byWilliam Perry Pendley.You note he controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations. Talk more specifically, and name names.

DHARNA NOOR: Absolutely. So, as you mentioned, William Perry Pendley very controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump, controversially because he was actually never confirmed by the Senate. This was the case for a number of Trump appointees. And he also was known, before he had a role in the Trump administration, for writing this book called Sagebrush Rebel, that was really in praise of Ronald Reagan, of Ronald Reagan’s anti-regulatory sort of agenda. It’s, I think, unsurprising to see his name in a sort of proposal that’s aimed at, you know, ending the ability for federal regulations to have any real impact on the environment.

Previous reporting from E&E News, from Scott Waldman there, found that Mandy Gunasekara had written another chapter focused on remaking theEPA, really focused on shrinking its authority both by laying off staff, by cutting budgets, with an especially big focus on sort of cutting environmental programs, like environmental justice programming and public outreach programming.

Another name that was in the proposal was Bernard McNamee, who wrote a chapter on the Department of Energy, again sort of in an attempt to say we should shrink the authority of the Department of Energy. He previously served as an adviser to Ted Cruz. And before that, he led this far-right organization called the Texas Public Policy Institute — or,Texas Public Policy Foundation, rather, that really aims to undo environmental regulation and fight renewable energy at the state level.

And so, we’re really seeing, I think, a who’s who of the far right in this attempt to, you know, not only sort of be in the next president’s ear if they’re a Republican, but also, you know, sort of recommend personnel and say, “Hey, here’s who you should staff up with.”

AMY GOODMAN: What role does billionaire Charles Koch play in this project, Dharna?

DHARNA NOOR: So, the Heritage Foundation, who, again, are the far-right foundation that sort of convened this group, Project 2025, has historically had ties, financial ties, to the Koch brothers, who are, of course, billionaires who made their fortune in fossil fuels and related industries. The Heritage Foundation is also a member of the State Policy Network, which is a sort of coalition of these extreme right-wing groups that have targeted regulation, especially climate-focused regulation, in states for many years. And I think, you know, I would just say, I guess, it’s no surprise that an organization with ties to people who have made such a great fortune in the industries that must be regulated in order to take on the climate crisis, you know, have historically been tied to a group that is trying to push that agenda to the presidential level.

AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, I wanted to ask David Wallace-Wells to respond to what Dharna is describing right now, and also talk about what needs exactly to be done. I mean, we’re speaking today, the day after the Supreme Court has just OK’d, cleared the way for construction of the contested Mountain Valley Pipeline to resume, lifting a halt on a section of the project that had been issued by a lower court earlier this month after a challenge by environmental groups.

...

ref

GUK

https://yyytheguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president

‘Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for next Republican president

Rightwing groups penned a conservative wish list of proposals for the next conservative Dharna Noor

Thu 27 Jul 2023

An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring the energy transition, it has emerged.

Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.

[A burned-out car against a background of charred trees and hills

Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show

Chair Grijalva, Rep. Porter Seek Documents on Another Incident of Potential Bribery under the Trump Administration

Washington, D.C. – House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chair Katie Porter (D-Calif.) today sent a letter to U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Deb Haaland requesting documents regarding a second incident of potential bribery between senior officials in the Trump administration and real estate developer Mike Ingram. Previously, the lawmakers sent the Committee’s first-ever criminal referral to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) alleging potential bribery regarding a Trump administration decision about Ingram’s proposed real estate development, the Villages at Vigneto in Benson, Arizona.

The full letter to DOI is available here.

In their letter, Chair Grijalva and Rep. Porter describe evidence that Ingram, a businessman with unique access to high-ranking Trump administration officials, may have unduly influenced former President Trump’s decision to pardon convicted public lands arsonists Dwight and Steven Hammond in exchange for a sizeable donation to a pro-Trump Super PAC.

The letter lays out the following timeline of events:

May 25, 2018 – Ingram’s executive assistant sends an email to Ben Cassidy, DOI’s Senior Deputy Director for External and Intergovernmental Affairs, with two articles arguing for pardons for the Hammonds, including anop-ed by Trump-era Bureau of Land Management Director William Perry Pendley.
July 1, 2018 – A proponent for pardoning the Hammonds tweets that President Trump is “seriously considering a pardon.
July 2, 2018 – Ingram makes a $10,000 out-of-cycle donation to the America First Action, Inc. Super PAC.
July 10, 2018 – President Trump pardons the Hammonds.

Ingram’s only other $10,000 donation during the 2017–2018 non-presidential election cycle was the donation that triggered the Committee’s investigation into—and subsequent criminal referral about—the Villages at Vigneto development. As the letter points out, “The parallels between the Vigneto case and the Hammonds’ pardons raise significant concerns about another potential case of bribery under the Trump administration and warrant further investigation.”

Background on the Villages at Vigneto Criminal Referral

On May 11, 2022, after a years-long investigation, Chair Grijalva and Rep. Porter sent the Committee’s first-ever criminal referral to DOJ outlining evidence of potential bribery between Trump administration officials, including then-DOI Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, and Ingram regarding the Villages at Vigneto (Vigneto) real estate development.

The Committee’s investigation began in April 2019 when the Arizona Daily Star reported that Steve Spangle, a now-retired Field Supervisor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) Arizona office, claimed he was directed by a “high level politico” to reverse the agency’s decision about Vigneto in late 2017. Later reporting revealed that then–DOI Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt was the “politico.”

The investigation found that—shortly after holding asecret breakfast meeting with Dep. Secretary Bernhardt—Ingram and 12 other individuals, many of whom maintained personal or professional relationships with him, donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the Trump Victory Fund and the Republican National Committee. All of the donations occurred on or near Oct. 6, 2017, the same day that a major federal action regarding Vigneto was made in Ingram’s favor.

Weeks later, on Oct. 26, 2017, Spangle officially reversed FWS’ decision on Vigneto, marking the final greenlight for the development.

Concurrent with standard practice, DOJ has not yet commented on whether they have pursued the investigation.

Press Contact

Media Contact: Lindsay Gressard

202-225-6065 | cell: 202-740-4715

---

one of the few cases of straight up corruption at fed level pre trump? --? BP oil spill?

Bernhardt was DOI lawyer in charge (vs IG?)

In another example, according to “a report by the Interior Department’s inspector general,” employees in the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) “‘frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relations with oil and gas company representatives,'” while allowing oil companies to “avoid paying royalties for offshore-drilling rights,” at a cost to taxpayers of “as much as $10.5 billion over about 25 years.”

From 2002 to 2006, according to “a report by the Interior Department’s inspector general,” MMS employees “‘frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relations with oil and gas company representatives.'”Inspector GeneralEarl Devaney said MMS made “mistakes” allowing oil companies to “avoid paying royalties for offshore-drilling rights,” which would “cost taxpayers as much as $10.5 billion over about 25 years.”

Stephen Power, “[Federal Oil Officials Accused In Sex and Drugs Scandal,” Wall Street Journal, 09/11/08]

---

https://westernvaluesproject.org/sec-bernhardt-and-interiors-latest-effort-to-skirt-congressional-oversight/

September 12, 2019 by Yetta Stein

Sec. Bernhardt and Interior’s Latest Effort to Skirt Congressional Oversight

Chief of Staff Todd Willens Finds Excuse To Potentially Illegally Cancel Congressional Oversight Trips

Interior Department chief of staff Todd Willens has reportedly canceled Interior’s sponsorship of congressional oversight trips, NBC News reported, amounting to a potentially illegal move. The decision comes after an alleged confrontation between an Interior staff member and an aide to the House Appropriations Committee.

“We’ve seen this Administration go to great lengths to avoid oversight and scrutiny, but this represents a new low,” said Jayson O’Neill, Deputy Director for Western Values Project. “Either Bernhardt and his underlings aren’t competent enough to manage congressional field visits or they’re just trying to stonewall necessary congressional oversight functions. Now more than ever Congress needs to vigorously perform oversight to ensure our public servants are protecting our public lands.”

The decision to halt all of Interior’s sponsorship of House oversight trips is potentially illegal, according to a law that says some funds Congress appropriates to federal agencies must be made available to scrutinize just exactly how appropriated money is being used.

This isn’t the first attempt by Secretary Bernhardt’s Interior to undermine Congressional oversight and outside scrutiny:

Prior to his abrupt departure to work for a foreign oil corporation, then-Assistant Land and Minerals Management Secretary Joe Balash sent a letter to both McCollum and Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) threatening to withhold “departmental resources” for their oversight efforts regarding DOI’s plan to relocate the BLM.
DOI’s Inspector General recently launched an investigation into the practice of political appointees at Interior to interfering with the release of documents in response to FOIA requests.

Just yesterday, William Pendley, Acting BLM Director and anti-public lands zealot, failed to give a clear rationale concerning Bernhardt’s plan to relocate the BLM in front of the House Natural Resources Committee. Instead, he spent much of the hearing defending his call to sell all public lands and his disparaging remarks towards Native Americans.

Willens is a long-time D.C. operative who has, throughout his career, continually utilized the lobbyist revolving door. Willens has his own history with congressional staff trips: he was among a group of congressional staffers who visited the Mariana Islands on a trip paid by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

---

huffpo tag

https://www.huffpost.com/topic/william-perry-pendley

what fresh hell under radar

Trump will formally nominate William Perry Pendley, a self-proclaimed “sagebrush rebel” with extreme anti-environmental views and a long history of advocating for the sale of federal lands in the West, to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management. [*Huffpo*]

:{:{}:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-william-perry-pendley-bureau-land-management_n_5e02645de4b0843d3601dd79

trump will formally nominate William Perry Pendley, a self-proclaimed “sagebrush rebel” with extreme anti-environmental views and a long history of advocating for the sale of federal lands in the West, to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management.

Pendley was tapped last July for a senior policy position at BLM, an agency of the Department of the Interior, and quickly elevated to acting chief. The backdoor appointment put him in charge of overseeing 245 million acres of public land — more than 10% of the entire U.S. landmass — and 700 million subsurface mineral acres. It also enraged environmentalists and sparked fears of a public lands sell-off.

Pendley, a native of Wyoming, is the former longtime president of Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative nonprofit that has pushed for the government to sell off millions of federal acres. He’s written several books about Western land issues, including one titled “Sagebrush Rebel,” a reference to the Sagebrush Rebellion movement of the 1970s and ’80s that sought to remove lands from federal control. In a January 2016 op-ed published by The National Review, he wrote: “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold.”

The Trump administration has vowed not to dispose of public lands. Yet it has cozied up to members of the pro-land transfer movement and tapped several opponents of federal land policy for high-ranking department positions. Pendley has dismissed concerns about his stance on federal lands and said his personal views and past statements ― including some that described climate science as “junk science” and comparing immigrants to a “cancer” ― are “irrelevant” to leading a bureau.

In a release announcing Trump’s intent to nominate him to the director post, the White House said Pendley “has worked to increase recreational opportunities on and access to our Nation’s public lands, heighten concern for the impact of wild horses and burros on public lands, and increase awareness of the Bureau’s multiple-use mission.”

[

In this photo from Oct. 11, 2019, William Perry Pendley speaks at a conference for journalists in Fort Collins, Colorado.]

Pendley also has ties to Lyndon LaRouche, the late cult leader, convicted fraudster and paranoid conspiracy theorist, as HuffPost first reported. Pendley published anti-environmental pieces in 21st Century Science & Technology, a fringe LaRouche magazine loaded with pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, and documents indicate he was at a 1994 conference where two of LaRouche’s associates called on anti-environmental groups to help kill Senate support for an international biodiversity treaty. Pendley dismissed his connections to LaRouche as “irrelevant."

sen Tom Udall of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the interior and environment appropriations subcommittee, told HuffPost that Pendley’s writings in 21st Century Science & Technology were “yet another clear sign he should not be in charge of the BLM” and should step down.

“The Trump Administration should nominate someone who believes in the agency’s mission and supports protecting our thriving outdoor recreation economy and iconic wildlife—not a longtime advocate of selling off U.S. public lands to the highest bidder,” Udall said in an email.

Nearly 100 environmental organizations signed on to a letter in late December demanding Pendley resign or be removed from office. The groups argued that he poses an “existential threat” to America’s public lands.

“President Trump is doubling down on his record as the most anti-nature president in U.S. history,” Kate Kelly, public lands director at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said in a statement Friday. “The nomination of William Perry Pendley sends a clear signal that Trump plans to move ahead with a radical, sweeping, and unpopular sell-off of America’s public lands.”

Pendley had voiced interest in becoming BLM’s permanent director, telling the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colorado, in November that he would welcome the opportunity but that it was ultimately up to the White House. The job requires Senate confirmation, meaning Pendley will soon face tough questions under oath from Democrats who say he’s unfit to lead the powerful agency.

Pendley’s first stint in government was under James Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s Interior Department chief, who is widely considered among the most anti-environment Cabinet appointees in U.S. history. Pendley joined Watt’s Interior Department in 1981 as deputy assistant secretary of the Minerals Management Service and has been described as Watt’s “ideological twin.”

Along with extreme views on federal land policy, Pendley detests the Endangered Species Act, once writing the conservation law seeks “to kill or prevent anybody from making a living on federal land.” He has sued the federal government numerous times in the last three decades, railed often against environmental “terrorists” and “eco-fascists,” and compared the climate crisis to a “unicorn” because “neither exists.”

Trump’s Public Lands Chief Wrote For A Cult Extremist’s Magazine U.S. Public Lands Chief Says His Positions On Climate, Immigrants Don’t Matter Hatred For The Endangered Species Act Runs Deep At Trump’s Interior Department Chris D’Angelo Environment Reporter, HuffPost Politics News Donald Trump Federal Lands William Perry Pendley Interior Department

---

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interior-department-officials-endangered-species-act_n_5d54627ae4b083855066faca

For :{20 minutes, Wyoming lawyer William Perry Pendley railed against “environmental extremists” and boasted about the legal battles his right-wing nonprofit had waged on behalf of Western property owners. The tirade came at a September 2014 }:{ of the conservative American Dream Coalition in Denver.}:

:{:{}:

Environmentalists primarily use three laws, including the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as tools to “drive people off the land” and into cities where they can be “controlled,” he said. At the time, Pendley was president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a Colorado-based nonprofit law firm that focuses on “protecting property rights” and advocates for selling off millions of federal acres in the West.

“We’ve gone from protecting the warm and fuzzies to protecting the cold and slimies,” he said. “It was supposed to apply only to federal land. Today, it applies to private property ― coast to coast, border to border ― which leads us here in the West to say what? ‘Shoot, shovel and shut up’ if you encounter one of those critters on your property.”

He continued: “That, by the way, is not legal advice.”

“Shoot, shovel and shut up” ― also known as the “3-S treatment” ― is a strategy extreme property rights advocates have embraced for getting rid of unwanted, imperiled species on private land. Pendley has also written that the law underlying federal species protection is used “to kill or prevent anybody from making a living on federal land.”

Late last month, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt tapped Pendley to serve as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Interior Department that oversees 245 million acres of public land, or more than one-third of the federal estate. This week, the Trump administrationfinalized rules that significantly weakenthe Endangered Species Act.Among other things, the changes will make it easier for government agencies to remove species from the protected list and limit their ability to account for the impacts of future climate change. The rollback comes on the heels of a United Nations report that found up to 1 million species around the globe are at risk of extinction due to human activities.

[pix

Interior deputy Susan Combs, pictured in 2010, spent decades as an official in Texas fighting conservation efforts alongside the state’s oil and gas industry.

That the Interior Department took aim at the ESA comes as no surprise when one considers some of the people in high-ranking posts. Pendley is one of several agency officials who detest what is arguably America’s most important law for protecting imperiled plants and animals.

Susan Combs, a former Texas comptroller who was confirmed in June as Interior’s assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, once equated proposed ESA listings to “incoming Scud missiles” headed for her state’s oil and gas-rich economy.As a state lawmaker in the 1990s, she championed legislation prohibiting state wildlife officials from gathering endangered species data from private lands without permission, according to The Austin Chronicle. As Texas comptroller, she fought against the federal government’s proposal to list the dune sagebrush lizard ― an effort that primarily benefited fossil fuel interests. And in 2015, Combs led three groups in a failed effort to petition to have federal protections removed for the golden-cheeked warbler, an endangered songbird native to central Texas.

Karen Budd-Falen, Interior’s deputy solicitor for fish, wildlife and parks, has called the ESA “a sword to tear down the American economy, drive up food, energy and housing costs and wear down and take out rural communities and counties.” As a private lawyer, she was involved in several ESA-related legal disputes, including representing parties accused of violating the law.

During a speech at a conservative summit in 2016, Budd-Falen asserted that she would “repeal the ESA in a heartbeat,” contradicting comments she made during congressional testimony in 2011.

[vid]

Budd-Falen was among several Interior officials who briefed reporters about the ESA overhaul on Monday.

kathy Benedetto, a top adviser at Interior, said in 1995that the ESA “states that plants, animals and bugs are more important than human beings and that’s morally bankrupt,” according to a daily newsletter from the Alliance for America, a property rights group that was “dedicated to bringing human concerns into environmental decision-making.”

“Most species became extinct before man showed up,” Benedetto added. “The earth changes constantly.”

At the time, Benedetto was an executive committee member at the Grassroots ESA Coalition, which was, as the Alliance for America described it, working to “throw out” the 1973 law.

Then there’s Interior chief Bernhardt, a former fossil fuel lobbyist and lawyer who has been a key figure in the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. In 2008, while working as the department’s top lawyer during the Bush administration, Bernhardt issued a legal memo that concluded it’s impossible to prove planet-warming greenhouse gases are impacting imperiled species and instructed federal agencies not to consider climate change when making listing decisions. As an industry lawyer, he sued the federal government over its implementation of the act. And as an official in the Trump administration, he intervened to block a scientific report by the Fish and Wildlife Service about the threat certain pesticides pose to more than 1,000 endangered species, as an investigation by The New York Times uncovered earlier this year.

[

The black-footed ferret was brought back from the brink of extinction by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service captive breeding program. The species has been reintroduced in the wild, but is still listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Bernhardt and the agency have defended the ESA rework, saying it will increase transparency and lift regulatory burdens without negatively impacting species recovery.

“We celebrate the #EndangeredSpeciesAct as the nation’s foremost conservation law w/ the ultimate goal of recovering the most imperiled species,” Interior’s press office wrote in a post to Twitter. “We are updating ESA implementation to make it more clear, consistent & better address conservation challenges of the 21st century.”

What’s clear, however, is that there are several people walking the halls of Interior’s headquarters in Washington who don’t share that sentiment and want to see sweeping revisions to the ESA. And that’s exactly what environmental groups say the American public is getting with the new rules, which alter how federal agencies implement portions of the law.

“You’ll hear from the administration that a lot of these changes are just kind of cleaning up and technical in nature,” Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of the conservation nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife and a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton, told reporters Monday. “But this package of regulations in no way will improve species conservation, they’ll do quite the opposite. They’ll seriously undermine the Endangered Species Act’s effectiveness in significant and important ways.”

---

320

https://www.ecowatch.com/oil-gas-leases-public-lands-2645367415.html

A federal judge threw out oil and gas leases on nearly one million acres of public lands that are important habitat for the greater sage grouse, arguing that a Trump administration policy that curtailed public input on the leases was "arbitrary and capricious."

:{:{}:

At the start of 2018, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had issued a memo shortening the period for public comment and protest on oil and gas leases from 30 days to 10, Huffpost reported. But U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush ruled in Idaho Thursday that around $125 million worth of leases issued under the new policy be tossed out and the full 30-day comment period restored. In his decision, Bush argued that BLM could not only consider the economic needs of fossil fuel industries at the expense of all other concerns.

"If the words 'justice so requires' are to mean anything, they must satisfy the fundamental understanding of justice: that it requires an impartial look at the balance struck between the two sides of the scale, as the iconic statue of the blindfolded goddess of justice holding the scales aloft depicts," he wrote. "Merely to look at only one side of the scales, whether solely the costs or solely the benefits, flunks this basic requirement."

The lawsuit was brought by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Western Watersheds Project in a bid to protectgreater sage grouse habitat, The Washington Post explained. The sage grouse, whose numbers have fallen from around 16 million to fewer than 500,000 because of disease and development, reflects the overall health of the Western sagebrush habitat that also houses hundreds of other species.

Bush's ruling tossed out five leases on more than 1,300 square miles — or more than 800,000 acres — of public lands in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, according to HuffPost and The Hill. However, it could have implications for around 67 million acres of sage grouse habitat in 11 Western states.

"This is an enormous victory for greater sage grouse and hundreds of other animals and plants that depend on this dwindling habitat," CBD senior campaigner Taylor McKinnon said in a press release. "The judge confirmed that it's illegal to silence the public to expand fossil-fuel extraction. It's a win for millions of acres of our beautiful public lands and a major blow to the Trump administration's corrupt efforts to serve corporate polluters."

The BLM said it was considering whether or not to appeal the ruling, according to The Washington Post. However, spokesperson Derrick Henry told The Washington Post that the agency remained committed to streamlining the leasing process.

"To do this, we have been working within our legal authorities to alleviate or eliminate unnecessary and burdensome regulations, while at the same time upholding public health and environmental protections, including sage-grouse conservation," Henry said.

However, environmental advocates have complained that, under the Trump administration, streamlining often comes at the expense of public participation. In one particularly ironic example last week, Democratic Congresspeople, activists and former government workers said that the White House's Council on Environmental Quality is making it harder to comment on its plans to restrict the National Environmental Policy Act, itself a law designed to give communities a say in projects that might impact their local ecosystems. However, Earthjustice attorney Drew Caputo told The Washington Post that the administration's attempts to work around public input also often ended up flouting the law, leading to court defeats like Thursday's.

"This administration has been relentless in its efforts to cut the public out of public lands decision-making, starting in 2018," Western Watersheds Project staff attorney Talasi Brooks said in a press release. "The court wasn't fooled by the agency's efforts to disguise its intention to provide greater influence to extractive energies, and the sage grouse and 350 other sagebrush-dependent species will benefit from today's win."

Correction. An earlier version of this article stated that a judge had banned oil and gas leases on nearly one million acres of public land. It has been updated to reflect the fact that he threw out existing leases rather than banning leasing generally.

:{:{}:

public lands greater sage grouse animals trump administration oil and gas positive news conservation

1/20

https://www.ecowatch.com/blm-public-lands-pendley-2643719726.html

The man who once wrote that "the Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold" has had his time in charge of U.S. public lands extended.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed an order Thursday leaving William Perry Pendley in charge of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) until April 3, The Hill reported. Pendley has been criticized for his support of selling public lands or opening them to fossil fuel extraction and other industrial uses, The Washington Post reported. He also sued the Interior Department in support of oil and gas exploration and against endangered species protections when he ran the Mountain States Legal Foundation. Despite this, he is now in charge of 245 million acres of public lands and 700 million acres of natural resources.

"Secretary Bernhardt's redelegation of the BLM director's authority to anti-public lands zealot Pendley is a slap in the face to all public land users and the U.S. Constitution," Western Values Project Deputy Director Jayson O'Neill said in a statement reported by The Washington Post. "[Putting Pendley] in charge of the BLM again is the equivalent of the Trump administration openly putting America's public lands up for sale."

Bernhardt's decision came only days after 91 conservation, wildlife and outdoor groups signed a letter to Bernhardt calling for Pendley to either resign or be removed.

One major concern raised in the letter is that Pendley is running the BLM without having been appointed by the president or confirmed by the Senate. Instead, Bernhardt appointed him "deputy director for policy and programs — exercising authority of the director" in July, according to InsideClimate News.

The BLM has not had a Senate-confirmed director during the Trump administration, and some critics are concerned the series of temporary leaders are part of an attempt to dismantle the agency.

"Only a Senate-confirmed Director or a Presidentially-appointed Acting Director would have legal legitimacy to lead the Bureau," the letter read.

The letter writers also raised concerns about Pendley's actions and opinions in and out of office.

In November, he publicly expressed support for the views of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an extremist public lands organization affiliated with armed militants Ammon and Cliven Bundy.
He has variousconflicts of interests. He represented three Utah counties in their attempt to shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments and still receives payments from former-employer the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is still suing the BLM.
He is overseeing a controversial move of the BLM headquarters from Washington, DC to Colorado that has not been approved by Congress.
He holds controversial views. In addition to arguing in support of selling off public lands, he also thinks that wild horses are the biggest issue facing Western public lands, ignoring issues like fossil fuel extraction and the climate crisis, the fate of the endangered greater sage-grouse and Gunnison sage-grouse and overgrazing by livestock.

"Putting someone like William Perry Pendley in charge of what happens on these public lands is likely to just accelerate climate disruption," Shelley Silbert, letter signatory and executive director of conservation group Great Old Broads for Wilderness, told InsideClimate News.

The Interior Department dismissed the concerns of the letter writers.

"For this group of environmental extremists to call themselves sportsman and conservationists is as laughable as this letter. Mr. Pendley brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the Department and is committed to carrying out the Administration's priorities for the betterment of the American people," an Interior spokesperson told The Hill Monday.

But environmental groups argue that Pendley's positions are the extreme ones.

"William Perry Pendley is an ideological zealot with values that are deeply out of touch with the mainstream," Wilderness Society conservation director Phil Hanceford said.conservation fossil fuels david bernhardt trump administration climate crisis climate change endangered species public lands

https://www.westword.com/news/blm-chief-william-perry-pendley-downplays-past-at-environmental-journalist-conference-11510581

no lnx

Denver Westword, LLC

RECOMMENDED FOR YOU

How Denver's Plan to Plan Neighborhoods Is Unfolding

The Corporations Are Here to Save Colorado From Climate Change

"What I Did in the Past Is Irrelevant," BLM Chief Says in Fort Collins

Acting BLM director William Perry Pendley appeared at an environmental journalism conference in Fort Collins.EXPAND

CHASE WOODRUFF | OCTOBER 11, 2019 |

On his personal Twitter account, acting Bureau of Land Management Director William Perry Pendley has called “the Main Stream [sic] Media … historically, culturally, and academically ignorant,” and approvingly quoted a tweet that called the press “crooked,” “broken” and “pathetic.”

As he faced a room full of journalists at Colorado State University in Fort Collins today, October 11, Pendley initially struck a more deferential tone. During a panel discussion on public-lands policy at the annual conference of theSociety of Environmental Journalists, Pendley assumed the role of an impartial, by-the-books bureaucrat — not the flame-throwing right-wing litigator who had called climate change a "fiction" and climate activism a "cult" before being tapped by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to lead the BLM earlier this year.

“I’m not a scientist, I’m a lawyer,” Pendley said in response to a question on climate change from moderator Juliet Eilperin, a Washington Post reporter. “I defer to the Secretary; he's been very clear on this subject. He believes that climate change is real, that mankind has an impact."

Pendley papers: 'Sell all BLM lands E. of Miss.'

Jennifer Yachnin and Timothy Cama, E&E News reporters

Published: Friday, August 30, 2019

LARAMIE, Wyo. — Ever since Interior Secretary David Bernhardt's decision last month to name self-proclaimed sagebrush rebel William Perry Pendley as the temporary leader of the Bureau of Land Management, the Trump administration has been fighting allegations that it is open to selling off the nation's public lands.

bad: Trump’s new federal lands chief believes in selling off federal lands

Interior SecretaryDavid Bernhardtlast week appointed conservative Wyoming lawyer and activist William Perry Pendley asactingdirector of the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees a quarter-million acres of federal public lands.
“The thing is, Pendley thinks the government shouldn’t even own those lands,” reports Utah Public Radio.
Pendley has “for decades has championed ranchers and others in standoffs with the federal government over grazing and other uses of public lands,” reports the Denver Post. “He has written books accusing federal authorities and environmental advocates of ‘tyranny’ and ‘waging war on the West.’”
On the conservative speaking circuit, “Pendley said that ‘you can’t understand the battle against fossil fuels without understanding what is at the core of the environmental movement and the environmental extremists. . . . They don’t believe in human beings,’” reports the Washington Post.
A Department of Interior spokesperson told the Post that despite Pendley’s support for transferring federal lands to state control, “the administration adamantly opposes the wholesale sale or transfer of public lands.”
(To my reporter’s ear, “wholesale sale or transfer” reeks of non-denial denial.)
Pendley worked for three decades as president and lead lawyer of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a right-leaning group funded in part by the Koch brothers and Big Oil firms. In a 2007 article, High Country News reported that the group had “lost far more often than it's won” in its lawsuits against federal environmental regulations.
Pendley takes up management of a quarter-million acres of federal land just as the BLM has kicked off its plan to disperse its most of its D.C. headquarters staff across the western U.S. (where the vast majority of BLM staff are already based).
“Acting” appointees evade scrutiny by the Senate, along with any press coverage that might arise during confirmation hearings.

a bit more on William Perry Pendley

In 1982, when Pendley was acting head of minerals leasing in the Reagan-era Department of Interior, a massive sale of coal-mining leases in Wyoming (his home state) and Montana was “marred by the leak of a confidential memo with information about bid amounts,” notes the “Department of Influence” project.“Pendley was later criticized by the commission assigned to study the sale for sending a ‘clear signal’ to potential lessees that DOI would accept low bids.”

In 1983, the Senate failed to confirm Pendley to a more powerful role at Interior, after it emerged that under his watch, the agency had been “politically screening scientists advising the department about oil and gas drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/07/17/senior-bureau-land-management-official-right-wing-pundit-who-has-said-climate-change-isn-t-real-and/224235

no lnx twt

Senior Bureau of Land Management official is a right-wing pundit who has said climate change isn’t real and diversity is killing people

Blog ››› July 17, 2019 1:01 PM EDT ››› ERIC HANANOKI

The Bureau of Land Management has appointed William Perry Pendley, a right-wing lawyer and commentator, as its new second-in-command. On Twitter in recent months, Pendley has argued that climate science isn’t real, claimed that the “Endangered Species Act is a joke,” and asked, “How many have died and how many more will die because of diversity and race-based decision making?”

E&E News reported on July 15 that the Bureau of Land Management, which is under the Department of the Interior, appointed Pendley as the “deputy director of policy and programs. Pendley started today, a BLM spokesman confirmed. The deputy director of policy and programs is the bureau's second-highest-ranking political position, behind the director.”

Pendley previously worked as the president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative nonprofit that has represented clients in cases against environmentalists and the federal government. He is also a right-wing pundit who has written for publications such as the Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, and FoxNews.com. He was also an active Twitter user through his account @Sagebrush_Rebel (he wrote last week that he is “taking a break” from the social network).

On Twitter, Pendley repeatedly attacked diversity initiatives in the United States. In response to former Minneapolis, MN, police officer Mohamed Noor's killing of unarmed 911 caller Justine Damond, Pendley wrote: “How many have died and how many more will die because of diversity and race-based decision making?” He told Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) to get over busing because he “was bused to five different elementary schools” as a child. And discussing his future agency, Pendley wrote that he was “impressed” that President Donald Trump “picked a tried, true, and experienced expert from the West” -- Interior Secretary David Bernhardt -- instead of listening to advisers who “pressed for ‘diversity’ at the top position.” (There is very little diversity in the senior positions of the Trump administration.)

Pendley also frequently attacked environmentalists and climate science, writing that climate science “is political science or junk science, not real science, and it is, as with real science, far from settled”; “#ClimateChangeIsReal NOT!”; and the “Endangered Species Act is a joke.”

Here are some of the worst tweets from his account:

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

How many have died and how many more will die because of diversity and race-based decision making? https://twitter.com/MarkSKrikorian/status/1121831360723812355 …

Mark Krikorian

@MarkSKrikorian

"None of the indications of Mohamed Noor's unfitness to [be] a police officer mattered to Minneapolis officials. They had too much invested in his success to acknowledge that their exercise in diversity and multiculturalism was a miserable failure." https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/04/minneapolis-muslim-cop-who-killed-unarmed-woman-says-he-shot-her-to-stop-the-threat …

11:09 AM - Apr 26, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

I'm impressed that, as @realDonaldTrump advisers pressed for "diversity" at the top position @Interior he picked a tried, true, and experienced expert from the West, @DOIDepSec. https://twitter.com/jackgerard/status/1098301477666185216 …

Jack Gerard

@jackgerard

Why Trump is so relatable.

View image on Twitter

11:08 PM - Feb 23, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

Oh, the Minnesota teens or youths, if you prefer. Never Somali. https://twitter.com/HollywoodInToto/status/1132666604594925568 …

Christian Toto

@HollywoodInToto

So, Can You Guess Why There's Media Silence Over This Gang Assault In Minnesota? https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2019/05/21/the-media-is-silent-on-reported-gang-attack-in-the-land-of-ilhan-omar-n2546645 …

8:18 AM - May 26, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

(Pendley was responding to a Townhall commentary piece about supposed “media silence in Minneapolis over an attack executed by a group of Somali teens.” However, Snopes.com debunked that Townhall report, writing: “According to University of Minnesota police, the incident did not involve a physical attack, did not cause any injuries, and was not racially motivated.”)

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

There was a little boy in Cheyenne, Wyoming who was bused to five different elementary schools. That little boy was me. I got over it @KamalaHarris you should too.

, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

Get the point. Like so much that comes out of her mouth that is not anti-American or anti-semitic, this is stupid. https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1137492248613064705 …

Ilhan Omar

@IlhanMN

It is wrong for Big Pharma to profit off of sickness.

We need Medicare for All — because healthcare is a human right. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drug-prices-oxycontin-predaxa-purdue-pharmaceuticals-boehringer-ingelheim/ …

10:06 AM - Jun 9, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

69 degrees and sunny today. Sky is falling tomorrow. #ClimateChangeIsReal NOT! https://twitter.com/ChrisCBS4/status/1115677264195325953 …

Chris Spears

@ChrisCBS4

BREAKING #COwx news ... Denver, Greeley, Fort Collins, Castle Rock, Limon, Sterling and vicinity are under a blizzard warning ahead of tomorrow's storm. More on CBS4 now. #4wx

View image on Twitter

1:29 PM - Apr 9, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

News flash: it is political science or junk science, not real science, and it is, as with real science, far from settled! Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science https://nyti.ms/2YQAnEA

The Huntington Canyon coal-fired power plant in Utah. The White House, already pursuing major rollbacks of greenhouse-gas emission restrictions, is amplifying its attack on fundamental climate-science conclusions.

Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science

In a significant escalation, policymakers are seeking to undermine or discard research showing the most dire risks of inaction on climate change.

nytimes.com

10:57 AM - May 28, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

About time. So-called environmental groups have become rich on these payoffs! .@Interior will develop a webpage to publicly list details of legal settlements and cases. https://dailysign.al/2w4COHf via @MikeBastasch @DailySignal

Trump Administration to 'Shed Light' on Secretive Practice That Costs Taxpayers Millions

“This is a big deal that will shed light on the millions of dollars the DOI pays out every year in attorneys’ fees” under federal laws, a DOI official says.

dailysignal.com

1:35 PM - May 17, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

There was no mention of unicorns either because neither exists. https://twitter.com/newsbusters/status/1093025253360652288 …

NewsBusters

@newsbusters

.@JohnKingCNN denounces Trump's popular #SOTU as a 'disgrace' because he didn't mention climate change http://ow.ly/9fkT101tqo6

11:19 PM - Feb 5, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

Endangered Species Act is a joke. Westerners know it is used by bureaucrats, their lawyers, and rich environmental groups to seize private land and stop economic activity.As Grizzlies Come Back, Frustration Builds Over Continued Protections https://n.pr/2Rd0phl

As Grizzlies Come Back, Frustration Builds Over Continued Protections

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service keeps trying, and failing, to get grizzly bears taken off the endangered species list. Some worry that frustration over this could hurt efforts to protect the bears.

npr.org

9:25 AM - Feb 4, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

It is not just on climate change. The worst offender, as the indispensable Dr. Rob Roy Ramey has pointed out, is the "endangered species cartel" that runs the #EndangeredSpeciesAct. Bureaucrats, left-wing nonprofit groups, and highly paid "scientists" make up the cartel. https://twitter.com/MDempseyCO/status/1071053999351177216 …

Matt Dempsey

@MDempseyCO

CU Researcher Raises Questions Surrounding Conflicts Of Interest In Climate Research http://westernwire.net/cu-researcher-raises-questions-surrounding-conflicts-of-interest-in-climate-research/ … via @WesternWireNet #ActOnClimate

Wm Perry Pendley

@Sagebrush_Rebel

As a lawyer, the Secretary is spot on regarding what the law provides. Interior Secretary Won’t Stop Oil And Gas Development Because Of Climate Change Concerns http://www.tinyurl.com/y4mxy4lt

Interior Secretary Won't Stop Oil And Gas Development Because Of Climate Change Concerns

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee Wednesday it wasn’t his job to combat climate change. His comments came

kuer.org

8:33 AM - May 9, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Wm Perry Pendley's other Tweets

Posted In

Environment & Science, Government

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/07/30/new-interior-department-senior-adviser-christian-palich-climate-denier-and-former-coal-group/224357

The Department of the Interior has hired former coal association president and right-wing energy commentator Christian Palich as a senior adviser. Palich previously appeared in the media to praise President Donald Trump for rolling back environmental protections and has tweeted that climate change is “junk science” and the Sierra Club wants to “kill jobs & destroy families for a phony cause.”

Under the Trump administration, the Department of the Interior has been rolling back environmental protections and pursuing actions to benefit the oil and gas industry. A recent analysisby the Center for Western Priorities found that the department “has completed or taken action on at least 53 policy changes requested or supported by energy companies and associations as of June 2019.”

In 2018, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report documenting that senior political officials at Interior “have unleashed constant—and ongoing—attacks on science, from sidelining the work of the agency's own scientists to systematically refusing to acknowledge or act on climate change.” The House recently held a hearing in which former Interior employees said that the department had suppressed its work on climate change.

Palich’s hiring continues the department’s anti-environmental trend. Palich, who states on his LinkedIn page that he started working at Interior last month, was previously the president of the pro-Trump Ohio Coal Association from 2013 to 2017. From April 2017 to February 2019, he worked as the deputy associate administrator for congressional and intergovernmental affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency -- an appointment that drew criticism from environmentalists because of his coal industry connections.

In the first half of 2019, he briefly worked as the vice president of government and public affairs at the lobbying firm Siekman, Siekman & Associates. In his now-removed biography for the firm, Palich touted his role as a commentator in the media, describing himself as a “leading, national voice” on energy issues and noting that he has “appeared multiple times on Fox & Friends, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, Fox Business, and NBC” and been “published in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and across Ohio media.”

Palich praised Trump in the media for undoing environmental protections. He appeared on the March 29, 2017, edition of one of the president’s favorite programs, Fox & Friends, and hailed Trump for signing an order rolling back President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, calling it a “great day”and saying that “we have a president of the United States that stands with” the coal industry. He also praised Trump in a November 25, 2016, op-edin The Columbus Dispatch, writing: “Just as he recognized an untapped potential in the American electorate, Trump recognizes similar potential in American coal. Making America Great Again will create a huge demand for energy -- and coal, with all of its technological advancements, will be there to meet it.”

Palich has frequently attacked climate science and environmentalistson his Twitter account. Here are some examples:

In response to President Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union speech, he wrote: “I walked to work in -7 temps this morning same day #POTUS says the debate on global warming is settled. Seems legit... #SOTU.”
He wrote of the Clean Power Plan in August 2015: “Even if you buy #EPA's bad science (which I don't), #CPP is still bad policy for America.”
In November 2015, he wrote that the Sierra Club wants to “kill jobs & destroy families for a phony cause.”
In February 2016, he tweeted in response to Obama’s criticism of Republicans for not wanting to act on climate change: “Not destroying our economy over junk science & a radical enviro agenda. Sign me up. #GOP #CoalCountry.”
After Trump’s election, he tweeted: “Time to push fight back on all the radical enviro regs that have been illegally been brought on America over last 8 yrs.@realDonaldTrump.” He also tweeted: “Really enjoying the radical enviro panic right now. Americans flat out rejected this agenda yesterday by a large margin. #CoalCountry.”
In January 2017, he celebrated the news that the new Trump White House had deleted references to climate change from its website, tweeting: “Looks like there is a new sheriff in town. #MAGA.”

He also attacked his future employers and colleagues while working for the Ohio Coal Association. In a February 2016 tweet, he promoted a FoxNews.com op-ed byright-wing lawyers John Yoo and Dean Reuter, who claimed that the federal government bureaucracy is unaccountable.Palich wrote: “All great points & being in the #coal industry we see everyday just how unaccountable @EPA, @OSMRE, & @Interior are.”

Media Matters previously documented that William Perry Pendley, who has just been made acting chief of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, is also a climate denier. Pendley has additionally argued that the federal government should sell its public lands, that environmentalists want to “destroy” civilization, and that diversity is killing people. Pendley’s appointment comes as two former directors of the bureau “say plans to move the agency’s headquarters to Colorado are an early step toward abolishing the entire agency and transferring millions of acres of federal land to the states,” as Bloomberg reported.

---

ref

Bernhardt names Pendley as acting BLM chief

Scott Streater, E&E News reporter

Published: Monday, July 29, 2019

The Interior Department has named William Perry Pendley, the conservative lawyer who supports the selling of millions of acres of federal lands to Western states, as the Bureau of Land Management's acting director — a move that is certain to rile congressional Democrats and environmental groups....[$]

---

ref 3

https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/ex-blm-chiefs-say-interior-is-moving-to-transfer-land-to-states

Ex-BLM Chiefs Say Interior Is Moving to Transfer Land to States (1)

Posted July 20, 2019, 2:00 AMUpdated July 22, 2019, 8:54 AM

Former directors say BLM headquarters move will cripple agency’s ability to manage its land
BLM hires former Mountain States Legal Foundation head as deputy director of policy

Two former Bureau of Land Management directors say plans to move the agency’s headquarters to Colorado are an early step toward abolishing the entire agency and transferring millions of acres of federal land to the states.

“I think the endgame is to try to make it almost impossible to manage these public lands,” said former BLM Director Robert V. Abbey, who served in the Obama administration from 2009-2012. “It’s just another step that they are taking that will add credence to those advocates that say these lands should be managed by the states.”

The Interior Department said July 16 that it plans to move the headquarters of BLM, an Interior agency, out of Washington and transfer 222 positions from headquarters across offices in 11 Western states. The new headquarters will be staffed by 27 people, including the BLM director, in Grand Junction, Colo., about 250 miles west of Denver.

Joseph Balash, assistant Interior secretary for land and minerals management, said in a July 16 letter to Congress that moving the BLM out of Washington would move officials closer to the land they manage and to the local governments affected by their decisions.

But Abbey, along with a former BLM director from the Obama administration and other former Interior officials, say the move will isolate the agency, and hobble it to the point of eventually convincing Congress that public land would be better overseen by another federal agency or by states themselves, which may be eager to develop the land and remove environmental protections.

The BLM manages about one-tenth of the land area of the U.S., mainly in the West, and is central to the Trump administration’s fossil-fuel-focused energy agenda. The agency is in charge of all federally owned onshore oil, gas, and coal in the country.

Property Rights Defender

Some politicians in the West have long opposed federal management of public land. Utah passed a law in 2012 demanding—thus far unsuccessfully—that Congress transfer more than 30 million acres of federal land to the state. Congress ignored the request.

The BLM this month hired a champion of the land transfer movement as its deputy director of policy and programs—William Perry Pendley, former president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is dedicated to defending property rights. He started work July 15, a day before Balash sent the letter to Congress announcing the details of BLM’s restructuring.

The Mountain States Legal Foundation, founded by former Interior Secretary James Watt, has long fought the BLM and other federal agencies over land use issues. Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton worked as an attorney for the foundation prior to serving in the George W. Bush administration.

Pendley has written that he opposes federal public lands protections, including national monuments, and wrote a column in the National Review in 2016 supporting the land transfer movement in Utah and advocating for the federal government to sell off BLM land.

BLM spokesman Derrick Henry confirmed when Pendley started in the job, but declined to respond to questions about why he was chosen.

Chance to Meet State Governors

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) also praised BLM’s decision to move its headquarters in order bring the agency closer to public lands under its management, and the people it serves.

“The problem with Washington is too many policy makers are far removed from the people they are there to serve,” he said in a July 15 statement.

Interior Press Secretary Molly Block said BLM’s realignment will allow its leadership in the West to be physically close to other career senior executives in other bureaus who are making decisions affecting the agency.

“We are not doing anything to change the legal basis of BLM’s role in land management, or the continued federal ownership of public lands administered out West by BLM,” Block said.

She said Western state governors will have more chances to meet in person with the BLM director in Grand Junction, and they’ll be more likely to be in the same time zone. BLM is currently operating without a director.

Grand Junction is at least four driving hours from Denver, the nearest state capital. The city’s airport offers nonstop flights to only two other state capitals—Phoenix and Salt Lake City. The shortest flight to Grand Junction from Sacramento, Calif., is about 90 minutes shorter than a nonstop flight from Sacramento to Washington.

Isolate and Dissolve?

Patrick Shea, who served as BLM director for part of the Clinton administration and is now a Salt Lake City lawyer, said the bureau is meant to serve all U.S. citizens, not just those from Western states. He said it was essential for the BLM director to be in Washington in order to engage with Congress and other Interior agencies, and to advocate for the budget.

“They want to dissolve gradually the federal BLM agency and transfer the responsibility and, more importantly, the assets to states, which robs the rest of the country of an asset they’ve been paying for,” said Shea about the move.

David J. Hayes, a former deputy Interior secretary in the Obama administration, also said the headquarters move “threatens to devalue the mission and importance of the Bureau of Land Management.”

Scattering headquarters employees around the West will make it difficult for them to coordinate with each other, and with other Interior agencies that control land bordering BLM property, said Abbey, the Obama-era BLM director. BLM’s structure already requires many land management decisions to be made locally, Abbey said; More than 90% of the bureau’s staff is already based in the West.

Without staff in Washington ensuring that decisions keep the national interest in mind when it comes to public lands and minerals, the headquarters move would also make BLM more vulnerable to influence from local interests, especially from the fossil fuels industry, Abbey said.

‘Sagebrush Rebellion’

Those views are also shared by some former employees in BLM’s headquarters, who worry the new 27-employee Colorado office will be largely symbolic.

Kit Muller, a strategic planner for BLM in Washington until he retired in 2018, said Interior’s plans to scatter staff will make it “difficult for BLM to do anything systematic at a regional or national level except authorize oil and gas development.”

The planned structure and its philosophical underpinnings make it easy for the BLM to defer to local governments on decisions unrelated to oil, gas, and coal development, Muller said.

“They’ll say the governor and county commissioners should be making these decisions,” Muller said. “If that’s your approach to centralize certain kinds of decisions and defer to state and local governments for other kinds of decisions, then what do you need a headquarters for?”

Interior’s inclination to diminish the federal government’s role in public lands is evident in its decision to hire Pendley, said George Stone, a director at large at the Public Lands Foundation, a BLM employee retirees group that “works to keep public lands in public hands,” according to its website.

Pendley is a “Sagebrush Rebellion, let’s-turn-land-over-to-the-states kind of guy,” Stone said, referring to the backlash against federal management of public lands. “This administration is not a fan of the BLM.”

---

https://www.forbes.com/sites/legalnewsline/:{2018/05:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:/02/hold-government-to-higher-standard-former-ca-ag-says-of-climate-change-lawsuit-controversy/#77ede6b7134e

A Texas judge has decided California officials suing the energy industry over climate change are talking out of both sides of their mouths, and the former top lawyer of the Golden State is disappointed in their actions.

It might be embarrassing, but California officials need to address their inconsistent claims, says Dan Lungren, California’s attorney general from 1991-1999 who recently penned an opinion piece on the subject in the Sacramento Bee.

Sued over the alleged future effects of climate change, Exxon’s argument (which has been signed off on by a Texas judge) is that the cities and counties alleging these impending disasters have failed to disclose them in their bond offerings.

“If this was happening in the private sector, I think I’d have a lawsuit for fraud,” said Lungren, who has also spent 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I don’t think public entities should be held to such low standards that all we do is make sure they’re not found liable for intentional fraud. I would expect those acting in the name of the people to be held to a higher standard.”

The California officials might soon be forced to explain themselves. Exxon’s Texas strategy seeks to depose them and an attorney at Hagens Berman, which represents some of the California governments on a contingency fee.

On April 24, Tarrant County District Judge R.H. Wallace, Jr. signed proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, changing little from what Exxon is claiming.

“While the California municipalities alleged in their complaints against the energy companies that the impacts of climate change were knowable, quantifiable and certain, they told their investors the exact opposite,” the document says.

“These contradictions raise the question of whether the California municipalities brought these lawsuits for an improper purpose.”

The California counties of Marin, Santa Cruz and San Mateo and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz, Richmond and Imperial Beach have filed suit against several energy companies - including Exxon, Chevron and BP - over climate change. The company is also being targeted by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

Similar lawsuits have been filed by New York City and Boulder, CO.

San Mateo County’s complaint says it is “particularly vulnerable to sea level rise” and that there is a 93% chance the county experiences a “devastating” flood before 2050. However, bond offerings in 2014 and 2016 noted that the county “is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur."

“I find it difficult to understand how, on one hand you can make a statement to the court with 92% certainty that these things are going to happen, and going to the people and saying it is unknown,” Lungren said.

As AG, Lungren was tasked with making sure state bond offerings were accurate – “Had we come across anything contrary to pleadings we were making with the courts, we would have corrected that.”

No matter how embarrassing it is, lawyers for the California plaintiffs should tell the judges presiding over their cases that they need to withdraw or amend their claims, Lungren said.

“If I were to find we inadvertently made statements in documents before the court that were contradicted by other documents – particularly those that the public is relying on the good faith offerings of the state - I would immediately take action to reconcile that,” Lungren said.

At a recent American Enterprise Institute event, an attorney representing Boulder noted that the bond offerings came with a statement regarding a final paper from the California Climate Change Center that said property in San Francisco Bay is vulnerable to impacts associated with sea-level rise.

But the cities did not present an opinion on the accuracy of those claims, which was noted by Competitive Enterprise Institute attorney who attended the event.

“You presume when you file, whether filing as an officer of the court or under oath, you’re saying what is contained in your document is truthful and factually correct,” Lungren said.

“So if you have two different documents contemporaneously - one before the court with respect to the lawsuit and the other under the various rules that say you have to have honest statements to potential investors, otherwise it’s subject to fraud – it’s at least hypocritical and a failure of legal responsibility in those instances.”

---

ref

https://legalnewsline.com/stories/511398628-in-suing-exxon-over-climate-change-boulder-is-hoping-company-s-deep-pockets-will-pay-for-its-left-wing-agenda-group-says

BOULDER, Colo. (Legal Newsline) – It remains to be seen if Exxon will fight the latest climate change lawsuit against it in the same way it is attacking the first round, by scrubbing municipal documents for evidence of hypocrisy by the public officials filing them.

According to a conservative group following the case, mounting such a defense might be overkill. The lawsuit filed by Boulder, Colo., and two Colorado counties is so frivolous, Exxon could end up seeking reimbursement for the costs of defending itself, according to Mountain States Legal Foundation.

William Perry Pendley, president of MSLF, says he isn't surprised that politicians in Boulder are going through Exxon's deep pockets "to pay for their costly, radical, left-wing boondoggles."

"But taxpayers who think at least they will not have to pay for this pricey misadventure and might even get some tax relief if it is successful, should think again," Pendley said.

"This lawsuit could not be more frivolous and if the judges do what other judges have done, legal sanctions and hefty fines will be imposed."

To defend itself from the California lawsuit, Exxon is seeking to depose government officials and a private lawyer in Texas court over whether their allegations of impending climate change-caused doom are contradicted by bond offerings that make no mention of it.

Asked if Boulder ever disclosed climate change-related threats to its property in any bond offerings, the City declined to comment.

It's unclear whether the bond argument is a possible defense for Exxon in Colorado, and the company did not return a request for comment.

As for Boulder, which filed its lawsuit with Boulder and San Miguel counties, its most recentofficial statement does not include references to climate change.

The official statement on acquisitions of land does not contain the terms “climate change,” “weather” or “global warming.”

Pendley said there is no science to support the lawsuit. Judges in the California lawsuits have yet to rule on motions to dismiss filed by the energy industry.

"Causation between the alleged inactions of the companies and the imagined harms is missing in its entirety and the demand that whimsical injuries be redressed (‘Help us pay to paint our streets white,’ one imagines) is laughable," Pendley said.

Addressing the bond topic last week was David Bookbinder of the Niskanen Center, which is one of two nonprofits representing Boulder on a pro bono basis. A third firm is taking as much as a 20% contingency fee, according to Boulder County's website.

Bookbinder was a speaker at an American Enterprise Institute discussion of California climate litigation the same day his lawsuit was being filed in a Colorado state court. He used an expletive to describe Exxon’s strategy and said that he was “ashamed” of the law firm representing the company.

“If we needed more evidence that no one thinks this was improper or fraudulent or disingenuous, my former adversaries in the plaintiffs securities bar – those people are extremely aggressive. The time lapse between bad news coming out and lawsuits filed by what were called the ‘strike bar’could be measured in, you know, one day, 48 hours, 72 hours, maybe four days – 96 hours,” Bookbinder said.

“There have been no lawsuits filed against any of these cities for their bond disclosures. That should tell you something as well.”

In 2017, the counties of Marin, Santa Cruz and San Mateo and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Imperial Beach filed suit against dozens of energy companies, including Exxon and 17 other Texas-based businesses, over climate change. The company has previously been targeted by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

“It is reasonable to infer that the municipalities brought these lawsuits not because of a bona fide belief in any tortious conduct by the defendants or actual damage to their jurisdictions, but instead to coerce ExxonMobil and others operating in the Texas energy sector to adopt policies aligned with those favored by local politicians in California,” attorneys for the company wrote.

In doing so, they must have lied to potential investors in their respective bond offerings, the company claims.

Statements made to potential investors contradict allegations made by the municipalities when they sued the energy industry, the filing says.

For example, San Mateo County’s complaint says it is “particularly vulnerable to sea level rise” and that there is a 93% chance the county experiences a “devastating” flood before 2050. However, bond offerings in 2014 and 2016 noted that the county “is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur."

Bookbinder noted that the offerings came with a statement regarding a final paper from the California Climate Change Center that said property in San Francisco Bay is vulnerable to impacts associated with sea-level rise.

But the cities did not present an opinion on the accuracy of those claims, which was noted by Devin Watkins, an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who attended the event.

The CEI has called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate the matter.

Panel member Andrew Grossman, a partner at BakerHostetler, said he isn’t sure whether there is evidence of securities fraud or violations of other regulations.

“It seems like it’s enough, at the very least, that it would be warranted, and that it is warranted, for there to be an investigation, for there to be somebody, you know, for the regulators who look at these things to take a look at them and determine, you know, did the cities live up to their obligations,” he said.

“If there was something that was inconsistent in the lawsuits versus the disclosures, honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me because, probably, nobody thought about it. And if they are consistent, well good for them. I guess they got it right.”

---

http://www.prwatch.org/node/326

http://www.prwatch.org/files/pdfs/prwatch/prwv8n4.pdf

Terrorism as Pretext by Sheldon Rampton

References to Pearl Harbor prevailed during the first days following the terrorist attacks of September 11. President Bush joined a chain of pundits and government officials in warning that the “war on terrorism” would be prolonged and difficult like World War II and would require similar sacrifices. Whatever those sacrifices may entail, however, the public relations industry is determined to ensure that they do not include wartime frugality. “PR Needed to Keep Consumers Spending,” proclaimed a headline in O’Dwyer’s PR Online on September 24. It cited marketing and PR executive Maureen Lippe’s opinion that the “greatest service PR pros can provide in support of the country is to ensure that the consumer continues to buy.” The world’s largest public relations firms all have offices in New York and Washington, D.C., and their employees felt the same shock, horror and confusion as the rest of the country when airplanes slammed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Public relations pros joined other volunteers in disaster relief efforts and in raising money for assisting the survivors. America’s home-grown propaganda machine nearly ground to a halt for several days as PR firms advised their clients to hold off for awhile on product launches, news releases and story pitches to reporter...

• U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick used the September 11 tragedy to call for fast-track negotiating authority to help President Bush expand the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) into a Free Trade Area of the Americas. “Trade is about more than economic efficiency,” he wrote in the Washington Post. “It promotes the values at the heart of this protracted struggle.” In a September 24 speech before th...

The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) used the terror attacks as a pretext to demand that the U.S. Supreme Court override a Clinton Administration decision blocking drilling for oil and natural gas in Montana. “The terrible tragedy of exactly one month ago and the uncertainty as to the reliability of foreign supplies make clear the importance of the United States developing its domestic natural resources,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the IPAA.

• The San Diego-based SureBeam Corporation took the opportunity to promote its food irradiation technology as a way to kill anthrax — even though it would take years and untold millions, if not billions, to install irradiation equipment in post offices throughout the United States. Worse yet, “SureBeam has made these claims without any supporting scientific evidence that the company’s ‘electron-beam’ irradiation equipment is capable of killing the anthrax bacteria or its spores,” observed a Public Citizen news release. “In fact, radiation is ineffective against anthrax spores, called ‘endospores,’ which are surrounded by numerous thick layers of material including protein and calcium.” • The Cato Institute, a libertarian, corporate-funded think tank in Washington, DC, used September 11 as... [guns on planes]

omg

http://www.booktv.org/Program/14782/Sagebrush+Rebel+Reagans+Battle+with+Environmental+Extremists+and+Why+It+Matters+Today.aspx

"Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan's Battle with Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today"

William PerryPendley

About the Program

William Perry Pendley talks about Ronald Reagan's energy and environmental policies and discusses President Reagan's efforts to balance environmental protection and economic growth. This event was hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.

William Perry Pendley served as deputy assistant secretary for energy and minerals at the Department of Interior during the Reagan administration and helped to author President Reagan's environmental policies. He is currently president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation. Mr. Pendley is the author of "It Takes a Hero" and "Warriors for the West."

claims RR est more park? in lower 48 than any other pres; but pendley tried to revoke BC wilderness,

---

Book Review AZ

Mr. Pendley, currently president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation, served in the Reagan administration as deputy assistant secretary for energy and minerals in the Department of the Interior. That experience gave him an insider’s view to write about “Reagan’s battle with environmental extremists and why it matters today,” the book’s subtitle.

This is a well-written, very detailed, and meticulously-documented book that shows how Reagan’s policies brought America out of the economic disaster of the Carter administration. Sadly for America, presidents after Ronald Reagan did not follow his policies.

To give you the flavor of this book, I will start with a quote from the last chapter:

“When President Reagan took office, he faced the worst economy since the Great Depression. What was the economy like when Barack Obama became president? Was it worse than the one Reagan faced, or not as bad? That is irrelevant. What matters is what each man did and the results. Reagan slashed federal expenditures, cut taxes, and reduced regulation, including opening federal lands to the private sector to discover and develop energy. The economy boomed. Obama launched a trillion-dollar ‘stimulus,’ unleashed federal lawyers and regulators, and increased taxes. The economy bombed.”

Ronald Reagan was an environmentalist, but he knew the difference between pragmatic conservation and mindless preservation. He also knew that conservation of the environment was best done when the economy is strong.

Pendley begins in Chapter One by recounting how President Carter’s “War on the West” incited the “Sagebrush Rebellion.” Reagan intended to quell the rebellion by opening up federal land, particularly the Outer Continental Shelf, for oil and gas exploration and development. That theme continues in Chapters Two and Three. Reagan instituted a “good neighbor policy” toward the states. In his first inaugural address Reagan said, “It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people.”

In Chapter Four: “We print what we know – so we print lies,” Pendley discusses the press and especially their attack on Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt. “What environmentalists find so infuriating about Watt is not just that he disagrees with them, but that he challenges their most deeply held convictions…”

In Chapter Five: “Modern day Luddites,” Pendley details the clash between radical environmentalists and James Watt. It was “a battle between two competing systems of government: between big and powerful New Deal-style government run by progressives and technocrats, … and a limited government that emphasized individual and economic freedom.” And “Reagan was about to present the first presidential challenge to the moral authority of the environmental establishment…”

Chapter Six deals with “The pit bull of environmental laws,” the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Reagan said, “Since the beginning of life on this planet thousands of species…have disappeared…as part of the evolutionary process in an ever changing world….shouldn’t we now and then remember nature’s partin the elimination of some species and separate the serious from the silly in our own policy?”

Pendley recounts the history of ESA and its predecessors. Reagan changed the emphasis from mainly just listing species to trying to actually recover species. This change in policy and procedure is what saved the California Condor. About environment groups, Pendley notes “litigation is their business, and business is good.” Pendley also notes that what is wrong with ESA “is how it has been implemented by the FWS [Fish & Wildlife Service], enforced by environmental groups, and interpreted by federal courts.” “Today, lawsuits by environmental groups are driving nearly everything the FWS does regarding the ESA.”

By the way, did you know the ESA has a sunset clause and that it must be reauthorized periodically by Congress? Congress has failed to reauthorize ESA since 1992. But like a zombie, it survives on annual appropriations of funds, sometimes hiding as a rider in another bill.

Chapter Seven, “If it can’t be grown, it has to be mined,” deals with America developing its mineral resources, especially strategic minerals, something the Carter administration was indifferent about.

“Reagan’s plan emphasized ensuring the availability of federally owned land for mineral prospecting and development so as to ‘achieve proper balance between wilderness and mineral needs of the American people.’” That plan was, of course, opposed by environmental groups.

Chapter Eight deals with federal land grabs and the growth of the National Park Service. Chapter Nine, “Inside the beltway” recounts how Reagan set about to tame the federal bureaucracy. Chapter Ten deals with America’s great coal resources and Obama’s war on coal. Chapter Eleven, “A department of miscellany” deals with many smaller issues.

In Chapter Twelve, Pendley sums up the state of the Union and Reagan’s philosophy: “…as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours…”

Pendley does a good job with this book as both an inside look at history and political philosophy, and as a cautionary tale.

This book will be officially released July 8 and will be available from the publisher, Regnery Publishing, Amazon, Barnes & Noble as well as in book stores.

No Greater Evil

Submitted by janeybell on Fri, 04/11/2008 - 11:03am

I think the author of these blog posts did a fine job, so there's no reason for me to try to rewrite her stuff.

Taken from The Endless Chain Pig Club:

William Perry Pendley. Ya’ll… get a clue.

Posted by admin on April 11th, 2008

Start reading, Beaufort County, NC. This man has offered to ride into our town on his black horse and defend Stan and Hood’s bigotry. Your tax dollars at work. Personally, I’d rather have an illiteracy rate below 60% than have my money go to lawsuits against Beaufort County.

Rightwing ‘Version’ of the Sierra Club Challenges Clinton Monuments

29-Nov-02

corporate front groups

One of the most arrogant rightwing corporate front men is William Perry Pendley. Posing as a “wise use environmentalist” and backed by corporate dollars, Pendley runs several slick anti-environmental groups under various names, including the Mountain Legal Defense Foundation. This outfit is a dark imitation of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. Pendley sucks people in the same way the Bush Reich does - preaching fear via the usual tactic: job loss, intrusive government, etc. But who on Earth would buy Pendley’s rants against intrusive government when his biggest backers are the same ones who back G.W. Bush? At presentPendley is seeking to undo Clinton’s efforts to save 3.7 million of America’s last unspoiled wildlands through establishng national monuments.

For the record, the Hood and Stan she's referring to are Hood Richardson and Stan Dethrage, two of Beaufort County's County Commissioners. These two right-wing retards decided to declare English the official language in Beaufort County and then used that declaration to have all signs in Spanish removed from county government buildings (including the menu options on the county's phone systems). Since the two (who should be the laughingstock of the Republican party) cut off access to public health and other services for non-english speaking residents, they've drawn the attention of the ACLU. This leads us to Pendley, who's offering to defend Hood and Stan, pro-bono.

Here's more:

Guess who’s behind drilling for oil off the NC coast?

Posted by admin on April 11th, 2008

You got it –Reagan era love-child, William Perry Pendley. Welcome to Washington, Mr. Pendley. Hood and Stan will see you now. Citizens, ask yourself why this man would offer to pro bono “defend” the Beaufort County Commissioner’s ruling to remove Spanish from the local governmental phone directory options? Ain’t it just a little weird?

Strategic and Critical Mineral Development in the Exclusive Economic Zone: Solutions and Strategies

Pendley, W. –*WILLIAM PERRY PENDLEY*

W Comiskey and Hunt;

This paper appears in: OCEANS

Publication Date: Sep 1986

Volume: 18, On page(s): 296- 301

Posted online: 2003-01-29 10:32:23.0

Abstract

The author addresses the evolving regulatory scheme being developed by the Department of the Interior to permit mining for non energy resources in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the United States under theOuter Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953.Compares and contrasts OCS Lands Act statutory scheme, as implemented with draft regulations, with Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act and onshore mineral development authorities. Discusses the alternative of potential enactment of new statutory authority, with delay and dislocations involved in the legislative process. The regulatory scheme is discussed in detail, exploring potential problems and offering solutions.

Want more?

Mining lobbyist info.

Or about our coastal waters?

Okay guys, your turn now. Google you some Pendley. Keep going, further into the internets than just his name. Try Assistant Secretary of Interior for Energy and Minerals William Perry Pendley, or Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, come on .. .dig dig dig…

Oh yeah, makes me damn proud to live in Beaufort County right about now. If the ACLU does actually take them to trail, do you think I would get camera coverage on CNN if I held a sign outside the courthouse that says "Please don't judge us by these idiots."?

---

William Perry Pendley, Esq.

William Perry Pendley is president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation and has litigated against the United States at the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal courts of appeal. Mr. Pendley is a former Marine officer, Capitol Hill lawyer, and Reagan administration official.

In Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America’s Frontier, Mr. Pendley puts human faces on Westerners’ historic and often precedent-setting fights against environmental laws, “lying and cheating” bureaucratsand their ethically challenged lawyers, seizure of “private Property” for “public use” without “just compensation,” and more. Mr. Pendley is also author of War on the West: Government Tyranny on America’s Great Frontier and It Takes A Hero: The Grassroots Battle Against Environmental Oppression.

Born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics and Political Science from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He was a captain in the United States Marine Corps, after which he received his J.D. from the University of Wyoming College of Law, where he was Senior Editor on Land and Water Law Review. He served as an attorney to former Senator Clifford P. Hansen (R-Wyoming) and to the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. During the Reagan Administration, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Minerals of the Department of Interior, where he authored President Reagan’s National Minerals Policy and Exclusive Economic Zone proclamation. He was a consultant to former Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr., and was engaged in the private practice of law in the Washington, D.C. area before his return to the West in 1989. He is admitted to practice law in Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

E-mail: wppendley@mountainstateslegal.com

Conference Speech

“A National Pattern: Historic Oil & Gas Producers in Allegany National Forest Head Off Environmental Litigators” - Speech from the Fourteenth Annual Conference

“The New Wars for the West” - Speech from the Eleventh Annual Conference

---

### Biography - *William Perry Pendley*

prfamerica.org/biography/Biography-Pendley-William-Perry.html‎

William Perry Pendley is president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal ... Mr. Pendley is a former Marine officer, Capitol Hill lawyer, and Reagan ...

### William Perry Pendley* - Conservative Columnist and Political **...*

townhall.com/columnists/williamperrypendley/‎

Born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, William Perry Pendley received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics and Political Science from George Washington ...

### *William Perry Pendley's* Articles | Human Events

www.humanevents.com/author/wpendley/‎

William Perry Pendley a constitutional lawyer served in the Reagan Administration, is author of the forthcoming book from Regnery Publishing, "Ronald Reagan ...

### Amazon.com: *William Perry Pendley*: Books, Biography, Blog **...

www.amazon.com/William-Perry-Pendley/e/B001K8A8O4‎

Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, And Liberal Judges on America's Frontier by William Perry Pendley (Jan 24, 2006). (6) ...

### Book Review – Sagebrush Rebel by *William Perry Pendley* - Wry Heat

tucsoncitizen.com/.../book-review-sagebrush-rebel-by-william-perry-pen...‎

Jun 26, 2013 - Sagebrush Rebel cover Mr. Pendley, currently president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation, served in the Reagan ...

### *William Perry Pendley* | LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com/pub/william-perry-pendley/3a/65/3a3‎

Greater Denver Area - President and Chief Operating Officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation

View William Perry Pendley's professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like William Perry Pendley ...

### MSLF - Press Releases - Mountain States Legal Foundation

www.mountainstateslegal.org/news-updates/press-releases‎

Jul 09, 2013 | by William Perry Pendley. A Colorado federal district court ruled today in favor of a Colorado man and a national gun rights group holding that a ...

### *William Perry Pendley* - The Virginia Land Rights Coalition

www.vlrc.org/authors/101.html‎

Each month, MSLF president and chief legal officer William Perry Pendley publishes his monthly column, Summary Judgment. A hard-hitting commentary on ...

### Stupid White Man of the Week: *William Perry Pendley*

thelocalcrank.blogspot.com/.../stupid-white-man-of-week-william-perry....‎

Mar 3, 2008 - Stupid White Man of the Week: William Perry Pendley. William Perry Pendley (and what a precious little name that is, too! Could he possibly ...

### :{► 3:01:(style="background-color:#000000ff"):}:► 3:01

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ufH65XRdng‎

Jul 12, 2009 - Uploaded by Brooks Imperial

7/11/09 Elbert County Republican Breakfast Forum William Pendleyis executive director of the Mountain ...

More videos for *William Perry Pendley* »

Ad related to William Perry Pendley

---

Stupid White Man of the Week: William Perry Pendley

William Perry Pendley (and what a precious little name that is, too! Could he possibly sound any whiter?) of the "Mountain States Legal Foundation" argues that tribes shouldn't have any jurisdiction whatsoever over non-Indians because...wait for it...Indians are too stupid and savage to understand the brilliance that is the white man's law. Oh, you think I'm exagerrating? Read this drivel for yourselves. Note that his brilliant legal reasoning utterly ignores tribal sovereignty, or rather treats it as something that Congress and the Federal Courts can wipe effortlessly away lest it inconvenience any white people in the slightest.

---

President and Chief Operating Officer at Mountain States Legal Foundation

Past

Partner at Comiskey & Hunt
Attorney at United States Government
Attorney at United States Congress

see all

Education

University of Wyoming College of Law
The George Washington University
The George Washington University

Connections

17 connections

Websites

Company Website

William Perry Pendley's Experience

President and Chief Operating Officer

Mountain States Legal Foundation

March 1989 – Present (24 years 5 months) Greater Denver Area

Partner

Comiskey & Hunt

March 1985 – March 1989 (4 years 1 month) Fairfax, Virginia

Attorney

United States Government

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

January 1981 – March 1984 (3 years 3 months) Washington, D.C.

U.S. Department of the Interior - Deputy Assistant Secretary; Acting Director, Minerals Management Service; Assistant Secretary, Energy and Minerals (Nominated)

U.S. Department of the Navy - Secretary John F. Lehman, Jr.

Attorney

United States Congress

Partnership; Myself Only; Political Organization industry

August 1976 – January 1981 (4 years 6 months) Washington, D.C.

United States Senate - Personal Staff

United States House of Representatives - Committee Staff

Captain

United States Marine Corps

Government Agency; 10,001+ employees; Military industry

March 1969 – August 1973 (4 years 6 months) CONUS and the Far East

Naval Flight Officer - RF-4B and EA-6A

William Perry Pendley's Education

University of Wyoming College of Law

J.D., Law

1973 – 1976

Activities and Societies: Senior Editor - Land & Water Law Review

The George Washington University

M.A., Economics and Political Science

1967 – 1968

Activities and Societies: Omicron Delta Epsilon - The International Honor Society for Economics

The George Washington University

B.A., Economics and Political Science

1963 – 1967

---

COMISKEY & HUNT

8251 GREENSBORO DRIVE

SUITE 1100

McLEAN, VIRGINIA 22102

Telephone: 703-734-4680

Personal Counsel to Individuals, Families, Closely-Held Companies and Private Foundations. Crisis Management. General Civil and Trial Practice in all State and Federal Courts in Virginia, the District of Columbia and Maryland. Federal and State Legislative and Administrative Law Practice. Entertainment and Sports, Government Contracts, Corporate, Labor, Domestic and International Business Transactions, Negligence, Personal Injury, Military, Wills, Trusts and Estate Planning, Taxation,Energy, Environmental and Natural Resources Law.

MEMBERS OF FIRM

STEPHEN W. COMISKEY, born Wantagh, New York, July 14, 1947; admitted to bar, 1976, Virginia and U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Virginia; 1977, U.S. Court of Military Appeals; 1980, District of Columbia; 1982, U.S. Supreme Court; 1983, Maryland, U.S. District Court, District of Maryland, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia and U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; 1984, U.S. Claims Court; 1986, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Education: U.S. Naval Academy (B.S., 1969); American University (J.D., magna cum laude, 1976). American Honor Society. Member, 1974-1975 and Managing Editor, 1975-1976, American Law Review. Author: A Good Lawyer™: Secrets Good Lawyers [and their best clients] Already Know, http://www.agoodlawyer.com, 1996; "Don't Pass The Buck to Your Lawyer," Government Executive, January, 1989; "Debarment: Government Approved Blacklisting," Fastener Technology International, February, 1989. Special Counsel, Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps, 1976. Chief Trial Counsel, Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort, South Carolina, 1976-1978. Special Assistant, General Counsel of the Navy, 1978-1980. Miller & Chevalier, Chartered, Washington, D.C., 1980-1983. Member: The District of Columbia Bar; The Bar Association of the District of Columbia; Arlington, Fairfax, Virginia, Maryland State and American (Member, Sections on: Entertainment and Sports; Public Contract; Litigation; General Practice; Labor and Employment Law; Taxation; Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Law) Bar Associations; Virginia State Bar; Master, George Mason American Inn of Court; The Association of Trial Lawyers of America; U.S. Naval Institute. [Major, USMC: Aviation, 1969-1973; Judge Advocate, 1973-1980]

SARAH HUNT, born Albuquerque, New Mexico, June 25, 1951; admitted to bar, 1976, Virginia; 1977, District of Columbia; 1978, U.S. Supreme Court; 1980, U.S. Tax Court. Education: College of William & Mary (B.A., 1973); American University (J.D., 1976); Georgetown University (LL.M., Tax Law, 1981). Member, 1974-1975 and Member Editorial Staff, 1975-1976, American Law Review. Attorney, Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service, 1977-1979. Senior Trial Attorney, Tax Division, Department of Justice, 1979-1985. Special Assistant, Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, Department of Justice, 1985-1987. Member: The District of Columbia Bar; Virginia State Bar; American Bar Association (Member, Taxation Section). Practice Areas: Wills, Trusts and Estate Planning; Taxation Law.

OF COUNSEL

JAMES H. WEBB, JR., born St. Joseph, Missouri, February 9, 1946; admitted to bar, 1977, District of Columbia (Not admitted in Virginia).Education: University of Southern California; United States Naval Academy (B.S., 1968); Georgetown University (J.D., 1975). Recipient: Vietnam Veterans Civic Council's Outstanding Veteran Award, 1976; American Legion National Commander's Public Relations Award, 1979; Emmy Award, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, 1983; Patriot Award, Congressional Medal of Honor Society; Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award, 1987. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, U.S. Department of Defense, 1984-1987. Secretary of the Navy, U.S. Department of the Navy, 1987-1988. [Capt., USMC: Infantry, 1968-1972]

---

comiskey pk white sox, shoeless joe tavern?

---

From powerbASE eur but scary flag b/c tttps?

looks like sw?

Mountain States Legal Foundation

From Powerbase

Jump to: navigation, search

Mountain States Legal Foundation calls itself “is a nonprofit, public interest legal center dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system”

A long-standing player against the environmental movement. It was set up with money from the ultra-conservative Coors family, and Joseph Coors sat on the board for three years. Its first President was Reagan’s ex-Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who was labelled as “public enemy Number One” by the Sierra Club. Watt was so unpopular that Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation asked a then unknown writer to pen a glowing biography of Watt. The writer was Ron Arnold, who went on to become one of the leaders of the Wise Use anti-environmental movement[1].

During Watt’s Tenure in office the MSLF “tackled such enemies of western business interests as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Department of the Interior. In the process the organisation picked up the reputation of being anti-consumer, anti-feminist, anti-government and above all, anti-environmental[2]”

According to CLEAR: “The bulk of MSLF's activities have been focussed on public land litigation and on “takings” issues. In recent years, MSLF has attempted to block wildlife management plans, defended the American Farm Bureau Federation against the Department of Interior over wolf re-introduction, and defended oil and gas companies that violated EPA pollution regulations. The group also opposed President Clinton's national monument designations, represented Rep. Helen Chenoweth(R-ID) in a suit against Clinton's American Heritage Rivers Initiative, backed a suit claiming the ESA violates the Commerce Clause, and unsuccessfully challenged a voluntary climbing ban on Devil's Tower designed to protect Native American religious rites.”[3]

| Contents <ul><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#Funding">1 Funding</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#Links_to_the_Bush_Administration">2 Links to the Bush Administration</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#Staff">3 Staff</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#Board_of_Directors">4 Board of Directors</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#Issues">5 Issues</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#Links_to_Wise_Use_movement">6 Links to Wise Use movement</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#Labelling_Greens_as_terrorists_.2F_exploiting_terrorist_attacks">7 Labelling Greens as terrorists / exploiting terrorist attacks</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-8"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#Contact">8 Contact</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-9"><a href="https://neoconeurope.eu/index.php/Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation#References">9 References</a></li></ul> |

| --- |

Funding

Early funding came from Coors, the National Legal Foundation, Amoco, Chevron, Marathon, Philips and Shell[4]

The Institute received $734,000 from 1985 to 2002, in 19 grants from the following five foundations[5]:

Castle Rock Foundation

JM Foundation

Sarah Scaife Foundation

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Carthage Foundation

Links to the Bush Administration

Rebecca W. Watson - Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management –served on the Board of Litigation at Mountain States Legal Foundation and is listed on the Defenders of Property Rights Attorney Network. A close friend of Norton her appointment caused outrage amongst environmentalists. "I think it’s quite clear that the most polluting industries in this country are in complete control of the Interior Department," said Jim Jensen, executive director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. "It’s just blind adherence to industrial ideology. Becky Watson’s appointment is an affront to the American people who own these lands. What Becky Watson and Gail Norton are trying to do is convert them from the public domain to the private dominion of corporations bent on destroying the lands for profit[6]."

Bennet William Raley - Assistant Secretary, Water and Science –has been a member of the Defenders of Property Rights Attorney Network and a member of the Board of Litigation at Mountain States Legal Foundation.

Ann Gorsuch-Burford - Reagan's EPA Administrator was also ex-MSLF[7].

Staff

William Perry Pendley - President and Chief Legal Officer. He served as an attorney to former Senator Clifford P. Hansen (R-Wyoming) and to the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. During the Reagan Administration, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Minerals of the Department of Interior (under James Watt), where he authored President Reagan's National Minerals Policy and Exclusive Economic Zone proclamation. Pendley is a long-term ally of the Wise Use movement

Board of Directors

Recent additions to the board include:

Mark Sexton - President and Chief Executive Officer of Evergreen Resources. Board member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States (IPAMS), Colorado Energy Assistance Foundation (CEAF), and the Colorado Board of Science and Technology. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)[8].

Duke R. Ligon - Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Devon Energy Corporation, the largest U.S.-based independent oil and gas producer and one of the largest independent processors of natural gas and natural gas liquids in North America[9],

Ron Krump - Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Krump Construction[10]

Terry T. Uhling - from J.R. Simplot Company, an agribusiness corporation[11]

Other Board members include numerous small oil and gas producers, retailers, and lawyers including Diemer True, the secretary of the Board, who is chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America and served on the transition committee for the Bush administration. His brother is a director of the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petroleum Council[12].

The Board “At large” also includes Patrick P. Davison, who is a Republican senate nominee. His democrat counterpart questioned Davison's "ties to a conservative group that has challenged American Indian rights, public access to Montana rivers, and bans on oil and gas drilling, road building in forests, and mining restrictions… This is an organization, on many issues, that is out of step with mainstream Montana”[13].

Another “At large” board member is Helen Chenoweth-Hage.[14] Chenoweth-Hage is a member of the Council for National Policy a “clandestine clearinghouse for key-right wing activists”. A long-term Wise Use and anti-environmental activist, Cenoweth’s anti-green and anti-government speeches are distributed by the Militia of Montana. She considers Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb from the Center for the Defence of Free Enterprise as “heroes”[15].

Issues

The MSLF has been involved in repealing environmental and Indian rights regulations such as the Endangered Species Act, American Indian rights, public access to Montana rivers, and bans on oil and gas drilling, road building in forests, and mining restrictions[16]. For example MSLF, like the PLF (see below) is at the forefront of repealing environmental regulations Some examples are:

In 1996 the then President Clinton proclaimed 1.7 million acres of southern Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The MSLF challenged the designation, and after six years, the case was finally due to be settled by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson In January 2004[17]. Working with the Wise Use off road group the Blue Ribbon Coalition, the MSLF also unsuccessfully challenged President Clinton's designation of six sites as national monuments in 2000 and 2001[18]

It has also sought to overturn judgements under the Endangered Species Act such as the listing of the Preble's mouse[19]

In May2003 MSLF lost a case when the U.S. Supreme Court refused a suit against Montana's law that gave the public access to state rivers and streams. It also lost a case challenging state wildlife regulations that bans non-Indians from hunting on reservations[20].

In 2001 MSLF sued the Bureau of Land Management over shooting restrictions on federal lands that protected the endangered black-footed ferret. It has also opposed wolf reintroduction in the Yellowstone National Park, and fought President Clinton's ban on road construction in 50 million acres of roadless national forest areas. It also challenged Montana's 1998 ‘voter-passed initiative’ that had banned use of cyanide in new open-pit gold mines. It has also represented the oil industry in challenging the Forest Service's ban on oil and gas drilling along the Rocky Mountain Front[21].

Links to Wise Use movement

The MSLF is an intricate cog in the Wise Use movement. Ron Arnold has called the MSLF the “litigating arm of the Wise Use Movement." It was a sponsor of the first "wise use" leadership conference in Reno, Nevada in 1988, and has participated in many conferences hosted by "wise use" organizations. Over the past two decades, MSLF has served as a training ground for a number of attorneys most active in the anti-environmental movement[22].

Roger and Nancie Marzulla. Roger was the second president of MSLF and served in the Reagan Justice Department under Edwin Meese (see CRC). Nancie is a former staffer at MSLF and worked with her husband at the Justice Department. The Marzullas are co founders of the Defenders of Property Rights, another Wise Use organisation. Founded their own law firm in the late nineties, Marzulla and Marzulla. Gale Norton was on the Board of Advisors of Defenders of Property Rights [23]

Another Director of the MSLF was “Dixy Lee Ray” famed for her book Trashing the Planet, which attacked the environmental movement and issues such as acid rain and global warming. She was a fierce advocate of nuclear power[24].

In 1994, the Free Enterprise Press, the publishing arm of Alan Gottlieb and Ron Arnold’s Centre for the Defence of Free Enterprise published a book called “It takes a hero – the Grassroots battle against Environmental Oppression”. Although published by the Free Enterprise Press, the book was called “ a project of the MSLF” and was written by MSLF’s President Perry Pendley. Among the Heroes were Wise Use stalwarts such as Dixy Lee Ray, Elizabeth Whelan from ACSH, Clark Collins from the Blue Ribbon Coalition, Chuck Cushman from ALRA, Bruce Vincent a timberman from the Alliance for America and of course Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb[25].

Two years later in 1996, CLEAR reported how “The March issue of Field and Stream (the nation's largest selling hunting and fishing magazine) took aim at War on the West, William Perry Pendley's book subtitled "Government Tyranny on America's Great Frontier." The review said "War on the West is laced with paranoid babble about a conspiracy of elite Eastern environmentalists whose mission is to communize America. It shamelessly distorts statistics, uses data out of context....William Perry Pendley is president and chief counsel for the Mountain States Legal Foundation and it shows. He's not interested in truth, but advocacy[26]."

In October 2003 Tom Paine magazine reported how 5the MSLF was part of a group calling itself Partnership for the West (PFTW) that was formally unveiled aiming to influence environmental legislation in Washington. Partnership for the West grew out of summit in Denver, Colorado, attended by elected officials, corporate representatives and long-standing anti-environmental organizations such as American Land Rights Association (see above), the Blue Ribbon Coalition (see above), and People for the West. Its president, Jim Sims, is the former communications director for the National Energy Policy Task Force - also known as Cheney's secret panel - and helped craft the administration's energy policy. According to Scott Silver, who heads a real environmental group called Wild Wilderness, “These people are paid lobbyists and public relations consultants serving the needs of every imaginable sort of polluter, developer, resource extractor or despoiler of the environment”.[27]

Labelling Greens as terrorists / exploiting terrorist attacks

Pendley was one of the first people to label environmentalists as “terrorists[28].” The MSLF also used September 11th attacks on the US to argue for drilling in America’s national parks. According to PR Watch: “The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) used the terror attacks as a pretext to demand that the U.S. Supreme Court override a Clinton Administration decision blocking drilling for oil and natural gas in Montana. "The terrible tragedy of exactly one month ago and the uncertainty as to the reliability of foreign supplies make clear the importance of the United States developing its domestic natural resources," said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the IPAA”[29]

Contact

Address: Mountain States Legal Foundation, 2596 South Lewis Way, Lakewood, Colorado 80227

Web address: http://www.mountainstateslegal.org

References

[1] A. Rowell (1996) Green Backlash – Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, p8-10

[2] R. Bellant (1991) The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism, South End Press, Boston, p 84; quoting Rocky Mountain Magazine (1981) March/ April, p29

[3] http://www.clearproject.org/reports_nortonWU.html

[4] R. Bellant (1991) The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthropy Undermines Democratic Pluralism, South End Press, Boston, p 85, 86; M. Megalli & A. Friedman (1991) Masks of Deception: Corporate Front Groups in American, Essential Information, December,

[5] http://www.mediatransparency.org/search_results/info_on_any_recipient.php?1082

[6] http://www.indiancountry.com/?2798

[7] http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0110-02.htm

[8] http://www.mountainstateslegal.org/press_releases.cfm?pressreleaseid=324

[9] http://www.mountainstateslegal.org/press_releases.cfm?pressreleaseid=326

[10] http://www.mountainstateslegal.org/press_releases.cfm?pressreleaseid=323

[11] http://www.mountainstateslegal.org/press_releases.cfm?pressreleaseid=325

[12] The Associated Press State & Local Wire (2004) “Wyoming Family Honored as ‘Citizens of West’”, 14 January

[13] The Hotline (2003) “Montana: Schweitzer Questions Davison's Views On Land/Water Use”, 19 November.

[14] http://www.mountainstateslegal.org/boards.cfm

[15] A. Rowell (1996) Green Backlash – Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, p63-64

[16] The Hotline (2003) “Montana: Schweitzer Questions Davison's Views On Land/Water Use”, 19 November.

[17] Donna Kemp (2004) “Judge to Rule on Monument”, Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City), 16 January

[18] D. Berman (2003) “Supreme Court Declines To Hear Challenges To Clinton-Era; National Monuments”, Land Letter, 9 October; Inside Energy /with Federal Lands (2003) “High Court Declines Monument Appeal, Leaving Clinton Designations In Place”, 13 October

[19] J. Kohler (2003) “Federal Agency Rejects Bid To Take Mouse Off Endangered List”, The Associated Press State & Local Wire, 18 December

[20] B. Anez (2003) “Schweitzer Assails Davison Tie To Conservative Legal Foundation”, The Associated Press State & Local Wire, 18 November

[21] B. Anez (2003) “Schweitzer Assails Davison Tie To Conservative Legal Foundation”, The Associated Press State & Local Wire, 18 November

[22] http://www.clearproject.org/reports_mslf.html

[23] http://www.clearproject.org/reports_nortonWU.html

[24] A. Rowell (1996) Green Backlash – Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, 138-139

[25] W. Pendley (1994) It Takes a Hero – the Grassroots Battle Against Environmental Oppression,

[26] http://www.ewg.org/pub/home/clear/view/CV_Vol3_No7.html

[27] Source: TomPaine.com, November 3, 2003; reported on http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2003.html

[28] A. Rowell (1996) Green Backlash – Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, p134

[29] http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2001Q4/terror.html

}: