April 8, 2017

"That's just somebody in the BLM sabotaging."

Said Meade, after I texted him the link to "Public lands agency changes website from family visiting a park to a giant pile of coal."

Is Meade right? I see in the article (at Mashable) it says:
By putting up a coal photo, the BLM is simply showcasing another aspect of its wide-ranging mission, Paul Ross, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said in an email. He clarified that Interior Department bureaus and agencies manage their content separately from the main department's accounts.

"We applaud their creativity in getting their message out," Ross said. He added that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke "has made it clear that he will manage our public lands in accordance with President Teddy Roosevelt's mixed use philosophy, where development of our natural resources is done in a way that balances conservation and public access."
Is Meade right?
 
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ADDED: Something similar came up on March 31st, blogged here, and I made a very similar poll. The overwhelming vote was sabotage. The EPA had put up a "media alert" titled "What They Are Saying About President Trump's Executive Order on Energy Independence" and the first thing on the list was a quote from Sen. Shelley Moore saying "With this Executive Order, President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand...."

47 comments:

Gahrie said...

The deep state once again trying to undermine the elected president of the U.S..

To be honest, i'm not sure what needs to replace it, but the current civil service system needs to go.

LYNNDH said...

Tack them down and fire them.

Scott Gustafson said...

The photo rotates on a daily basis. Today is has a guy fly fishing.

Snark said...

"More than anything else, spokesman Jeff Krauss tells NPR, the change in home page photos is due to an IT redesign that will once again allow different photos to be rotated through that reflect the agency's multiple-use mission. That used to be standard practice until recently, Krauss says."

Laslo Spatula said...

Passive-Aggressive Government Bureaucrat Behavior.

Insubordination feels good when you know there are no consequences to be suffered.

I am Laslo.

Bob Boyd said...

They should put up a picture of Hillary in the woods.

chickelit said...

I voted door #2 because anthracite coal is a beautiful thing and is part of land management. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Bob Boyd said...

Apparently some CPS workers rescued a girl they believe was raised by coal miners.

She was seen eating deer meat with her elbows on the table and when shown a picture of Al Gore holding a hockey stick graph she laughed like a friggin' monkey.

Michael K said...

I would like a picture of the BLM selling land to states and individuals who will use it for better purposes.

traditionalguy said...

Coal miners are no longer a forgotten people. Get over it.

Anonymous said...

Althouse said... and the first thing on the list was a quote from Sen. Shelley Moore saying "With this Executive Order, President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand...."

More correctly:

and the first thing on the list was a quote miss-attributed to Sen. Shelley Moore (R) but really from Sen Tom Carper (D) saying "With this Executive Order, President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand...."

Mike Sylwester said...

I thought that BLM stood for Black Lives Matter while reading the first half of this post.

Achilles said...

Blogger Michael K said...
"I would like a picture of the BLM selling land to states and individuals who will use it for better purposes."

Or private developers and using the money to buy our way out of Medicare SS and our debt.

Laslo Spatula said...

Gilbert Frank, Passive-Aggressive Government Bureaucrat...
There was a new memorandum emailed to us today, outlining a change in one of our policies. So I did what I always do: I sent an email reply asking for further clarification. It will take weeks before i get a response, and when I DO get a response? You got it: I email back that I need further clarification on the clarification. I can do this for months, even years. Eventually they will give up and move on: chalk another one up for The King of Inertia...

Sometimes, though, I like to shake it up a bit, just to keep things fresh. In these cases I will purposely misunderstand the memorandum, and then send out one email after another misdirecting my fellow employees. You send enough emails, no one can keep up: the People Above respond to the first one, but that was now already six emails ago: I don't have time to look back, there are more emails to send...

For fun, I will occasionally omit people on a Reply on an email chain. Then, a few emails later, I will add them back on. Now they are confused, and the email chain devolves into people trying to figure out what is going on...

A variation on this is to 'cc' someone who has nothing to do with the subject. Now that person gets involved, and sidetracks the entire conversation, trying to figure out why they are now included. I always 'cc' the nervous types: they panic, thinking they are being set up for failure, and -- you got it -- they then send a LOT of emails....

It's funny, watching the nervous ones who fear failure. They haven't learned that there is no such thing as Failure for a Government Employee. You simply say I must have missed that memorandum and today is a New Day...

I am Laslo.

gspencer said...

BLM?

I think they meant to put in this image,

https://cbsstlouis.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/453677744.jpg?w=594&h=360&crop=1

Anonymous said...

The first thing to do is stop the militarization of these federal agencies. No BLM Police. etc. That's just an excuse to gain power and ensure funding, the two principal objectives of any Federal agency.

Rob said...

Is Meade right? Is Meade right?! What is this, the Hillary Clinton Administration, where women are emboldened to question their husbands' statements? Meade, you need to nip this in the bud.

tcrosse said...

Maybe the Bureau of Land Management will have to change its name to avoid confusion with Black Lives Matter. Something similar happened to the Wisconsin Tourist Federation (WTF).

Anonymous said...

stever said...
The first thing to do is stop the militarization of these federal agencies. No BLM Police. etc.


I disagree. BLM guys are out in the country if not wilderness. Like Forest Service types, they can run across Bears, Meth Labs, or Grass Plots.

I do agree they don't need SWAT teams and WTF, why does the Dept of Ed have armed Police?

U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General special agents broke into a California home at 6 a.m. Tuesday and reportedly roughed up a man because of a student aid issue involving his estranged wife. His wife was not present.

In 2010, the Post’s Valerie Strauss reported that the Education Department was purchasing 27 Remington Brand Model 870 police 12-gauge shotguns to replace old firearms used by Education’s Office of Inspector General, which is the law enforcement arm of the department. DoE said the guns were necessary to help enforce “waste, fraud, abuse, and other criminal activity involving Federal education funds, programs, and operations.”

Left Bank of the Charles said...

There's a goat video in the BLM twitter feed, as well as a logging video. No, not sabotage.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"She was seen eating deer meat with her elbows on the table and when shown a picture of Al Gore holding a hockey stick graph she laughed like a friggin' monkey."

Think I heard this on NPR...

mockturtle said...

"...President Teddy Roosevelt's mixed use philosophy, where development of our natural resources is done in a way that balances conservation and public access."

This is the correct approach. As it is, the BLM could easily be re-named the BLMM, Bureau of Land Mismanagement.

mockturtle said...

Laslo @11:20: Wow, excellent. Did you, by any chance, work for a government agency at one time?

Big Mike said...

Is Meade right? I think Meade regularly demonstrates a great deal of common sense.

WeRetort said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mockturtle said...

Big Mike observes: Is Meade right? I think Meade regularly demonstrates a great deal of common sense.

Uncommon common sense, in fact.

Kirk Parker said...

Drill Sgt,

I disagree right back at ya.

BLM agents should have the right to arm themselves, the same as any other American does, for their own self-protection. (Whether they're in the middle of rural nowhere, or the middle of DC nowhere, I should hasten to add.)

Period.

For anything else, they need to call local law enforcement, the same as any other American does... or if it's a purely federal issue they can get ahold of their buddies at the US Marshalls Service or the FBI.

virgil xenophon said...

mockturtle@12:26/

ANYONE who has worked even a nanosecond in a govt bureaucracy can write such parodies in their sleep. TRUST ME,I know, I spent years in the USAF and later as a budget officer at City Hall in New Orleans (makes the Feds look like a fount of rational & logical thought)..

virgil xenophon said...

PS to mockturtle

Although perhaps not with the all consuming flair of Lazlo :)

Michael K said...

"City Hall in New Orleans (makes the Feds look like a fount of rational & logical thought"

I can imagine.

Anonymous said...

Yeah they need protection from animals, etc., but they don't need to be arresting anyone, using handcuffs, tasers, etc., Call the sheriff.

Bruce Hayden said...

Last I knew, the BLM has their own SWAT team, deployed by Harry Reid to defend the solar panels belonging to one of his son's clients fro Clyde Boundy's cattle. Still, I have little doubt that if BLM employees need to be armed, they will be, under Sec Zinke. Voted for the guy last Nov. Doing what Trump voters wanted. Good guy.

Always had a soft spot for BLM people. Probably nowhere in the federal govt do so few people manage so much land. Husband of a good friend is retiring from there as a hydrologist, and best friend of my kid worked for them after graduation with Americorp (or whatever it is called). He spent his time in N NV checking out range conditions for land leased for cattle ranching. Not surprisingly, esp under the Obama Administration, they were, on occasion, met with guns. The problem was that ranchers really do treat their own land better than the land they lease from BLM. But there aren't enough BLM employees to properly manage it, making sure that it isn't overgrazed.

mockturtle said...

Not BLM, but I've personally seen a USFS ranger attacked by a dog. She shot it, and rightly so. If she hadn't, I would have.

Trumpit said...

Isn't it racist to represent Black Lives Matters (BLM) by 16 tons of #9 coal? The Charred remains of Black protesters after they've been shot by the police?

Tennessee Erin Ford singing 16 Tons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU

Coal miners have notoriously hard lives. One hopes their children can escape the same fate.

Qwinn said...

Bureaucrat Lies Matter!

mockturtle said...

Trump has apparently stopped a yuuuuge land grab in TX by the BLM: Victory for Farmers in TX

Bruce Hayden said...

Part of the problem with BLM is that a lot of its land is land that was not economically valuable enough to homestead under the Homestead Act. The Homestead Act was written with Midwest farmland in mind, where you could make a decent living by farming, say, a quarter section (160 acres). A lot of BLM land is only good, agriculturally, for cattle and sheep, and often required multiple sections to be profitable. If there were a lot of trees, the Forest Service got the land, and the BLM got what was left. So, timber was never a big thing either, which mostly left mining and ranching. And more recently, some recreation, but, again, the FS, because of their forests, got the better land. Someone had to manage the millions of acres that no one else wanted, and that was, ultimately, the BLM. Millions and millions of acres of open desolate land.

Bruce Hayden said...

The Texas thing is interesting. Texas is the one "western" state with very little federal land. This is because of its history before joining the USA. The rest of the west was mostly acquired by the US, then later split into states. With the exception of some Spanish land grants, the rest of the west went through federal hands before being acquired by individuals, which meant that the land not bought or homesteaded is still in federal hands. In the case of TX though, the unclaimed land belonged to TX before statehood. This dispute with the BLM appears to revolve around the river separating TX from, I believe, NM moving, and the Feds claiming land that had been in private hands that they claimed was now in the other state. You would think that state borders would, somehow, be sacrosanct, but apparently not, if it mans more federal land.

William said...

I think they would have chosen a more photogenic coal seam if they were truly pro coal. Perhaps even photoshopped a few diamonds into the seam. I also think the director's response was tongue in cheek. Government work is fun.

Thuglawlibrarian said...

That black coal, that is the color of money!

Biff said...

I'm surprised Mashable's headline wasn't more oriented toward click-bait.

For example, "OMG! Trump Uses Coal to Symbolize BLM!"

Michael K said...

With the exception of some Spanish land grants, the rest of the west went through federal hands before being acquired by individuals,

Some friends of mine have a 33,000 acre ranch in south Arizona. When Arizona became a state, the feds took away twice as much land from the original land grant.

It's called "Babacomari Ranch" and some acreage has been sold off near SIerra Vista.

Fritz said...

The Cracker Emcee said...
"She was seen eating deer meat with her elbows on the table and when shown a picture of Al Gore holding a hockey stick graph she laughed like a friggin' monkey."

Think I heard this on NPR...



Not far off Alexandra Petri's article in today's WaPo

gadfly said...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

Texas leaders and farm owners secured a victory in the battle against the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) attempted land grab along the banks of the Red River. The federal agency announced it is suspending the surveys ordered during the Obama Administration to justify the attempted takeover of 90,000 acres of land.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I voted door #2 because anthracite coal is a beautiful thing...

So are unbleached coral reefs, polar bears that haven't drowned, coastlines that haven't been ruined, skies clear of ever-increasing numbers of flies, tundra in Alaska that hasn't melted and taken down warped telephone poles and millions in other infrastructure with it, etc. etc. etc.

But you have a mental defect that makes you value a certain isoform of carbon over all the other arrangements of molecules including carbon as they exist in presently living things.

Keep personifying dead matter. "Talk to the chemicals..."

chickelit said...

The only thing sexier than anthracite is plumbago.

Unknown said...

I saw BLM and was going to read it, but then I realized it's the other BLM