President Obama’s pick for Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, has kind of flown under the radar with the big snow storm and the recent hearings on Capitol Hill. Jewell is a radical environmentalist who used investor dollars to advance her agenda while she was in the private sector. Just think what she’ll do in the public sector.
Kimberly Strassel gave us a peak into Jewell’s past. Let’s just say she’s no gem.
Far from a creative choice, Ms. Jewell is just the newest addition to Mr. Obama’s second-term team of loyal ideologues. It is in fact Ms. Jewell’s (relatively unknown) history on the environmental fringe, and her liberal policy prescriptions, that surely made this an easy Obama call. The president knows he can rely on Ms. Jewell to do for the federal government exactly what she’s done at an activist level: Lock up land, target industries, kill traditional jobs.
There are companies that strive to be environmentally responsible. And then there is a different category of firms altogether—those on the radical extreme, which use investor dollars to wage open green activism. REI is among these. Ms. Jewell, who joined the REI board in 1996 and rose to CEO in 2005, has been central to campaigns that have squelched thousands of jobs in the name of environmental purity.
REI, for instance, actively supported the Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which in 2001 locked up a third of all national forests, dealing another blow to logging and mining. When former Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire in 2006 announced she’d fight the Bush administration’s effort to inject some flexibility into the rule, she held her press conference at REI’s headquarters, flanked by Ms. Jewell. “We develop them, we log them, we mine them—we lose those assets forever,” complained Ms. Jewell at the event. REI’s well-heeled clientele ultimately got 58 million acres of “pristine” walking trails; Western loggers got to tell their kids they no longer had a job.
REI’s bigger influence, however, has come from funneling money to radical groups via the Conservation Alliance, a foundation it created with Patagonia, The North Face and Kelty in 1989. Ms. Jewell was lauded by the group in 2010 for committing REI to giving more than $100,000 a year to this outfit.
Read the whole thing, it gets even worse.
@lonelycon Is ANY Obama nominee a gem? Right now, the bar for acceptability is so low that it’s just not being a convicted felon.
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It should be a given to caring American citizens that there is an antagonism between environmental protection and business initiatives. It seems to me that Sally Jewell represents an approach which recognizes the necessity for dealing with this antagonism with arbitration in a reasonable fashion. Moreover, the mandate which voters granted to a second term Obama administration includes the non-interference with his decisions for the various cabinet positions, including this one, for which the WSJ has done no more than to express their partisan ideological position, which is their privilege to do.. However, when and if their side ever again wins a Presidential election fair and square, then they would have demonstrated their mandate to make cabinet appointments to their liking. Currently, they earned no such mandate, therefore they are left on the sidelines to quibble ideologically, nothing more!
Republicans would do well to revisit the inclinations on matters of the environment of one of their own: Theodore Roosevelt.
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Jewell’s nomination must be *permanently* blocked considering the eco-terrorist groups that REI has openly funded through the Conservation Alliance.
On top of that, REI has been granted an Obameecare waiver just like the rest of the green crony capitalist companies funneling money to the Democrat climate change fanatics.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/interior-secretary-nominee-sally-jewell-recieved-obamacare-waiver-for-rei/article/2520821
And guess where she was at before REI? Why, she was head of commercial banking at doomed Washington Mutual from 1996-2000, a bank that collapsed seven years later when they made bad commercial lending choices and used the money to buy mortgage-backed securities.
http://www.americanbanker.com/people/interior-secretary-nominee-sally-jewell-has-roots-in-banking-1056636-1.html
I wonder how the Occupy Hippies feel about that.
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OMG, WW. Wake up and smell the toast burning. Environmental protection IS a business initiative. And don’t try to throw Teddy R in our face here. Teddy was the first progressive president. Party affiliation makes no difference in matters of growing government and control over the populace. Get a clue.
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I wish your point about environmental protection being a business initiative were true. It is not true. The open hostility by business related entities toward the EPA is proof enough. Specifically, we have the supporters of the XL Pipeline as a recent example. More generally we have the Republican/business driven climate change deniers. Let us acknowledge scientific consensus over politically distorted ideology regarding this extremely important sensitive issue of environmental protection.
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You’re wrong, WW. Just do a little research on violent environ-groups. No one denies the climate changes as it has historically, it’s just the self guilt of your own species that you’ve been brainwashed into believing that disqualifies you from any objective conclusion. If you disagree, show the definitive, repeatable, scientific proof that any climate change is manmade. Don’t feel too bad, WW, most lefties like you suffer from this mental condition; its basis is fear, insecurity and Normopathy. I support your recovery.
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Scientific consensus is hardly “brainwashing”, michigan. Your comment makes me wonder if you understand the science behind anthropomorphic induced climate change. The science is solid, and the predictions are true. Have you bothered to look into it, or is the science over your head? I suggest you take the time to read through this: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
This is not politics, michigan, it is fundamentally science!
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Regarding Sally Jewell’s nomination to be Secretary of the Interior, is it any wonder that the WSJ, or the Right, should oppose it? Of course not – no surprise here. There has always been an antagonism between business and environmentalists/conservationists, which is productive if the end result is compromise. Take Teddy Roosevelt as an example.
Problem is, the Right abhors compromise. But elections have consequences, one of which is that our second term President has the option to choose his own cabinet. Here is the point:
“Jewell’s varied background from the private sectors of oil, banking, and business have been praised to prepare her to balance the difficult dichotomy of the Interior department’s mission to “[Protect] America’s Great Outdoors and [Power] our future”. However without a political background to provide a pattern of past voting, many others are awaiting to hear her responses at the Senate confirmation hearing, in order to gauge where the balance will lie between resource conservation and energy development.” http://news.wildlife.org/featured/sally-jewell-ceo-of-outdoor-retailer-rei-nominated-for-interior-secretary/
Let us at least wait to watch her confirmation hearing, while also taking into account her business background in addition to her being an advocate for conservation and environmental protection. She looks to be a qualified candidate to me.
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You’re beyond ignorant, WW. Science is not consensus based. That’s called opinion, theory and conjecture. And when it’s spewed by lefties like you it’s ideological. Science is provable conclusion based on experimentation with repeatable outcome. I know it’s been out there awhile but ostrich syndrome shouldn’t be an excuse, WW. Read up on the facts of this fraud if you have the courage and wise up on the people that have you by the brain stem:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7180154/Climategate-Professor-Phil-Jones-considered-suicide-over-email-scandal.html
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Oh, and I forgot to address your “evidence” and “predictions”. LMFAO! You must spend a lot of money on Miss Cleo.
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