Not satisfied with their policy of letting our national parks burn (visit Yellowstone for a look at the effects of this enlightened policy), the ecocrats now promote the burning of residential housing as well. Numerous reports from homeowners, fire departments, and forestry officials in California confirm that the California gnatcatcher and the Stephen's kangaroo rat were "protected'' by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service whose bureaucrats threatened fines and imprisonment for anyone clearing brush or weeds in many of the areas recently burned by wildfires. See, for example, I. C. Sugg of the Competitive Enter prise Institute, Wall Street Journal, November 10, 1993. Many of those who obeyed the current bureaucratic rules of the Endangered Species Act and complied with threatening letters from USFWS saw their homes burned to the ground, while those who cleared brush and weeds regardless of those threats still have their homes. Fire officials had warned for more than a year that the areas around these homes needed clearing, but USFWS prevented action. Now that $1 billion worth of homes and the "protected'' rats and gnatcatchers have all been incinerated, a new enviroargument has erupted. California officials and property owners want to seed the burned areas with grass to prevent winter erosion and mud slides. The enviros are fighting this, because it might slow regrowth of the brush and weeds that fed the fires. In a preview, however, of the wisdom the Administration will bring to socialized medicine, Interior Secretary Babbitt called the carnage in California a "model'' of "ecosystem management'' and stated that "The lesson of these fires is that we've got to keep the people away from the fire hazard.''
The Boston Herald, Sept. 30, 1993, p 35 by Don Feder reports a speech by Clinton's new appointee as "goodwill'' ambassador to the United Nations Population Fund, Jane Fonda. Hanoi Jane's remarks were consistent with her reputation as an enemy of human freedom.
