Greenie Dem Hypocrisy

Harry Reid is instrumental in moving the Dem's green agenda in the Senate and he does a good job at it -- which is one reason why endangered species act reform and other efforts to create a more realistic regulatory framework have been dying in that chamber.

It's an important job for the minority leader because the Dems realize that the enviro voter is an essential block to them, their counterpart to evangelicals and the GOP. So they bleed green.

With Reid, though, the true green is money, as my last post detailed. Not only that, but this particular scam, detailed by Capts. Quarters, shows how cynical the Dem leadership is towards the green voter. They pander to the green voter, but when push comes to payola, they drop their vaunted environmental concerns and screw over the environment.

In the Coyote Springs scandal Reid masterminded for developer Harvey Wittemore, Reid got a total of $75,000 for himself, the DNCC campaign committee and his two sons. In return, he:

• Skirted ESA protections on the endangered desert tortise
• Got development approved on a "fragile series of streams and washes" by strong-arming federal regulators

My clients spend millions surveying their land for species, wetlands and sensitive habitat, then they don't develop on that land. They design and fund mechanisms to provide ongoing funding to make sure the environmental resources they protect are managed and maintained. The avoid wetlands, and if they can't, they usually have to build or restore three or four times more wetlands acreage than they damage.

I'm proud of them. Sure, this comes in part because they must comply with the regs, but it also comes from the knowledge that an environmentally sensitive community has a marketing advantage over the kind of community it appears that Wittemore created with Harry Reid's help.

My clients are overwhelmingly Republican. They have little patience with Greens. And they are, by far, more honorable than the Hon. Harry Reid.

Related Tags: Environment, Politics, Green, Reid, DNC, GOP