US Fish and Wildlife stinks to high heaven on sagebrush lizard

The dunes sagebrush lizard. It's a reptile, but it's not half as reptilian as either
former Texas Comptroller Susan Combs or several regional employees of the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

I have blogged more than once about former Texas Comptroller Susan Combs' voluntary, landowner-based plan for habitat conservation, or rather, "conservation," for the dunes sagebrush lizard, most of whose habitat happens to be in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and whose voluntary habitat conservators, or "conservators," happen to be oilmen.

I first noted that is was the conservative half of a neoliberal idea that rancher/oil lover/Interior Secretary Kenny Boy Salazar loved, and agreed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in charge of Endangered Species Act issues, should accept. Shock me.

As part of that, I noted that she was being sued by two of the more activist, non-Gang Green environmental agencies, with Center for Biological Diversity in the lead, because the people and groups overseeing her voluntary "conservation" were about as transparent as most things involving Texas government.

Unfortunately, as I noted next, Combs got a federal judge to agree with her that the oversight agency, officially a private entity and therefore exempt from the state's Public Information Act, should stay that way and remain non-transparent, while telling the judge to "just trust them" on how much "habitat conservation" was actually being done, but that her agency should be given legal standing to fight in the lawsuit.

And then, CBD and Defenders of Wildlife, a few months ago, lost in federal district court their attempt to reverse the Fish and Wildlife + Combs + oilmen agreement, discussed here with links.

Well, there's a backstory to this.

At about the time CBD and Defenders were losing their case in district court, Fish and Wildlife, documented here, was entering into a legal settlement with the former top official in Texas, who sued after being pushed out of his job.

And, why was he pushed out of his job?

Because he was fighting Kenny Boy Salazar and Susan Combs on the dunes sagebrush lizard, and saying everything about lack of enforcement and lack of transparency that I and the environmental groups were saying.

One person, however, did lose his job: Fish and Wildlife's top official in Texas, Gary Mowad, who ran afoul of his bosses after raising concerns about the decision to place the long-term survival of the lizard in the hands of those who opposed the listing. 

Mowad had told internal investigators that the federally approved plan to conserve habitat for the reptile through voluntary pacts between the state and landowners was not legal, verifiable or enforceable under the Endangered Species Act.

Oh, but wait, it gets better. 

He has civil service protection, so he couldn't be fired. Instead, like a surplus Japanese salaryman, he got the risutora treatment:

Within three months, Mowad was removed from his job in Austin and transferred to regional offices in New Mexico, where he had no significant work to do, according to testimony by him and colleagues before a judge in a whistleblower case. The power play, he said, forced him to retire prematurely. 

Fish and Wildlife has denied the allegations, but the agency decided to settle with Mowad last October for an undisclosed amount in spite of historically long odds against federal employees winning such cases. ... 

(N)o phone, no computer and no housing awaited Mowad when he arrived in Albuquerque in October 2012. And there was no significant work. He helped put out cookies and drinks for a meeting and afterward collected comment cards from the attendees. 

With no end date for the assignment, Mowad filed a 19-page request for a federal investigation, alleging reprisal for his claims of scientific misconduct within the service.

Those claims of scientific misconduct? Mowad had gone to FWS' Inspector General after it signed off on the Combs plan. And, why did it do that, only a couple of years after Mowad had been named top biologist in Texas for the agency and hired for his specific skills?

Bigger backstory, involving financial/service favors ... and who knows what else.

First, the backstory to the lizard's needs.

It was first identified for ESA listing in 1982. But, as with many other species, through a mix of understaffing and underfunding on one hand, and FWS foot-dragging on the other, it wasn't actually brought up for consideration until 2010. However, with the Permian Basin started to rebound from its latest, Great Recession-caused bust, that looked problematic.

Our story picks up again:

The Fish and Wildlife Service needed to sign off on the Texas plan, and Mowad was asked to assign someone to review it. But Mowad's first two choices — two of his most experienced biologists — were rejected by the agency's deputy regional director, Joy Nicholopoulos, a scientist who led the Texas office before him. 

The third choice? 

(Mowad) asked if Nicholopoulos wanted a biologist named Allison Arnold to lead the review and was told that she did. 

Here’s the real backstory. 

Mowad said he would not assign her without being ordered. The biologists he offered "would just do the science, let the science take 'em where it takes 'em," he testified. But in addition to having less experience, Arnold was living rent-free in a Driftwood house owned by Nicholopoulos, leading him to question whether she had undue influence over the staffer.

Then, Nicholopoulos’ boss, Bemjamin Tuggle, who had touted Mowad’s hiring for the Texas spot, upped the political ante.,

"There was no way we were going to list a lizard in the middle of oil country during an election year," Tuggle said.

That comment, although Tuggle (a Shrub Bush appointee to his position) later claimed he was joking, is what led Mowad to talk to Fish and Wildlife’s inspector general.

So, it's clear that FWS higher-ups, however high the chain of higher-ups goes past Tuggle, had the fix in. And, because of this financial/rental arrangement, they knew who to pick to sign off on Combs' plan.

The rest of the story is worth a read in itself. It discusses Mowad’s whistleblower hearing, including noting that federal employees rarely win them, but that FWS had a documented history of retaliation against employees like this.

It's also an illustration of the bad ethics there, vis-a-vis the rental situation. If anybody should have been disciplined by FWS, both Nicholopoulos and Arnold should have been suspended without pay.

Of course, to environmentalists and supporters who are familiar with FWS, none of this is very surprising. To people who know Gale Norton as BushCo's Interior Secretary, Tuggle's behavior in particular isn't that surprising. Nor is Ken Salazar, the slightly more pale green, more neoliberal follow-up to Norton.

The problems with Selma

There's a bunch of stories out there about historic accuracy problems with the movie Selma. Rather than chase a dozen links, I'll post one from Truthout, that's about Selma and two other movies, one of them not in the Best Picture running, and go from there.

First, Selma's not the only big-history picture to deliberately alter history for drama; famously or infamously, Steven Spielberg de-unanimized Connecticut's Congressional vote on the 13th Amendment.

That said, that was different than this; it didn't fundamentally change the perception of a main character in the movie.

By claiming LBJ sicced J. Edgar Hoover on Martin Luther King, though, Selma does exactly that.

First, it's pretty clear that LBJ had no advance knowledge of Hoover's "tomcat" letter to King, in which he attempts to force King to drop his civil rights work, perhaps even commit suicide. It's not clear how long after it was sent, in fact, that LBJ knew about it.

Second, if anybody sicced Hoover on King, it was the Kennedys.

Third, since LBJ had as much trouble keeping his pecker in his pants as did Jack Kennedy, Hoover had the drop on him. If LBJ had known in advance about the "tomcat" letter, he might have acquiesced. Not that that would have been good, it's just the reality. (Sidebar: Presuming the homosexuality rumors about Hoover are true [deliberately not using the word "gay"], he obviously kept it buried through a mix of discretion and of having the goods on anybody who seriously thought about trying to leverage him.)

At the same time, the movie's handling of this is part of how it gets King wrong.

King didn't let this letter stop him from involvement in the second Selma march. Rather, that march didn't have a green light from a federal judge, so King wouldn't march, beyond the famous "turnaround," discussed in Wikipedia's overview of Selma 1965. This had nothing to do with Hoover's letter, and everything to do with details of King's nonviolence strategy, and not breaking the law when breaking the law would have hurt the movement.

And, thus, one error becomes compounded into two. Or more.

In turn, that seems to be part of larger problems with Selma the movie's treatment of King, and of King vis-a-vis other parts of the civil rights movement.

Basically, the movie underplays the level of distrust between King, and the likes of James Forman and others from SNCC, from what I understand. So, we get a sanitized view of the civil rights movement, along with a Manichean view of LBJ vs. MLK.

I also find this response, noted in the Wikipedia article about the movie, disturbing:

Director (Ava) DuVernay and U.S. Representative John Lewis (whom she portrays when a young man) responded separately that the film Selma is a work of art about the people of Selma, not a documentary. DuVernay said in an interview that she did not see herself as "a custodian of anyone's legacy". In response to criticisms that she rewrote history to portray her own agenda, DuVernay said that the movie is "not a documentary. I'm not a historian. I'm a storyteller". Lewis wrote in an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times: "We do not demand completeness of other historical dramas, so why is it required of this film?"

Actually, we do, John. See my note above about Lincoln. That was just one of several errors or issues of framing which drew a lot of critical comment, as Wiki notes. The opening scene, with Lincoln talking to the black soldiers, face to face, also drew potshots, as did the issue of whether history had been, in general, sacrificed on the altar of drama. That said, at least Lincoln offered an honest portrayal of the passage of a major Congressional action.

And, DuVernay's own comments indicate that she seems to have a postmodernist view of issues of historical accuracy, with her "accurate to whom?" comment. Besides that, she admits that it was about drama, and her own drama, when she says elsewhere that it's about "what I feel about LBJ."

LBJ was a bastard in a number of ways. And, after his falling out with MLK over Vietnam, he may have pulled some of his punches on civil rights, though he did manage to ram the Fair Housing Act through Congress in 1967.

When we're still far from being a post-racial nation, making out LBJ to be the bad guy doesn't help issues. Distorting what King's nonviolence angle was about doesn't help matters, either. Nor does making it look like Selma was a "King show" through and through, along with papering over both diversity and dissent in the civil rights movement.

Because this is an issue that's more ongoing than the legal end to slavery via the 13th Amendment (albeit Lincoln's larger legacy, and how much Andrew Johnson misunderstood it, or understood it correctly is still an issue), the Selma movie inaccuracies are also more potent than the Lincoln ones.

And, not all critics, or at least one Oscars voter, like the movie as art, either, and the narrative flow of the movie may add gasoline to that, too.

Is it a bad movie? I don't think so.

Could it have been an even better movie, within the budgetary, independent film constraints? Yes. Both more historically accurate AND, I think, more dramatic.

And, claiming that its critics are "smearing" the movie? Comes close to the social justice warrior POV, to me.

A blockbuster #Phillies - #Dodgers trade possibility for Cole Hamels

It's no secret that the Philadelphia Phillies and GM Ruben Amaro are in rebuild mode.

Cole Hamels

It's also no secret that the most valuable "chip" Amaro has for rebuilding is lefty ace Cole Hamels. Trade rumors and speculation have been swirling around Hamels for some time, to the point that, in addition to wanting to be on a winning team, I think he's this eager to be traded just to quiet the noise.

But, for whom, and why?

A lot of fans have been throwing out ridiculous ideas, fans of other teams hoping that Amaro is even more of an idiot than stereotypes about things like the Ryan Howard contract have made him out to be.

But, Amaro moved Jimmy Rollins for a decent return in minor leaguers Zach Eflin and Tom Windle, so, let me suggest he's not that much an idiot, fans of other teams.

And, let me then suggest a blockbuster trade, which would also involve the Phils' second biggest chip, closer Jonathan Papelbon.

Zach Greinke

L.A. Dodgers righty (fixed) ace Zack Greinke’s a pretty darned close comp to Hamels. Hamels is a skoosh or two better in FIP, WAA, etc.; they're almost the exact same on innings thrown. And, of course, both are lefties.

There are some financial differences, though, which is why this isn't a totally dumb idea.

The biggie, of course, is that Greinke can opt out of his contract after this year. Even if he doesn’t opt out after this year, he’s got one less contract year than Hamels, without even counting Hamels’ option or vesting. And, it's only $1 million a year more than Hamels has, and with no option or vesting year afterward.

So, Amaro would save a minimum of $20 million, and, assuming Hamels' contract has its vesting year work, a medium level of $44 million. If Greinke opts out, then, of course, Amaro saves $75 million. No, he doesn't get a return player back for more than one year in that case, but, he gets to take a big salary dump. Maybe a second-tier prospect, like Dodgers fans have been stupidly suggesting would be a big part of the trade, helps that out.

Why would Greinke not block this, though?

Er, because he doesn't have a no-trade clause in his contract, that's why.

There, that takes care of that part of the trade.

Meanwhile, Dodgers' closer Kenley Jansen has a foot injury, and will miss the first month or so of the season. But, closers are generally overvalued, and if you're Amaro and rebuilding, you don't need a closer that's high dollars anyway. So, Jansen plus maybe some other second-tier prospect gets you Papelbon as part of the same trade. Jansen’s got one arb year left, whereas Papelbon has an option that will almost certainly vest. And, Papelbon's contract for this year is well more than Jansen's.

That will save Amaro $6M plus wherever Janson's 2016 arbitration comes in below $13M.

So, Greinke, Jansen and one or two second-tier prospects for Hamels and Papelbon.

Well, no, let's fine tune this based on what happens with Greinke.

The four major-leaguers plus just one second-tier prospect — for now.

In 2016, if Greinke opts out, the Phillies agree to eat part of Hamels 2016-18 salary and in exchange, the Dodgers send two more prospects their way.

So, what do the Dodgers get from it?

Several things.

1. No worrying about a Greinke opt-out.

2. Related to that, a bit of financial savings, in the longer term if Greinke did opt out and they decided to bay the additional freight.

3. An moderate-decent upgrade at their No. 2 starter for less money. While Greinke's not bad, Hamels is still the better pitcher by most sabermetric measurements.

4. A little bit of an upgrade at closer.

Or, a variant on this, which wouldn't save Amaro money from a Greinke opt-out, but would give him more than just a prospect, and would leave the Dodgers with an even stronger rotation?

Hyun-jin Riu

The Angelinos offer Hyun-jin Ryu instead of Greinke, and no prospects.

Ryu isn't in Greinke's league, let alone Hamels, but he could be a No. 2 starter on many a team, including Philly. His contract lasts as long as Hamels' does, not counting Hamels' option/vesting year. And, it's less than $8M a year for its duration.

Now, Ryu had some minor, nagging injury problems, so it might be a bit of a gamble on Amaro's part, but I don't think it would be too much gamble.

And, no, this isn't just snark on stupid non-Phillies fans getting incredibly greedy, although it is a part a troll of them. I think one or the other of these two ideas is a legitimate trade deal, trading contracts as well as players. Philly fans, and Amaro, you can thank me later.

Dodgers fans, it doesn't have as much "net" return as you'd like, but with new team president Andrew Friedman already indicating he'd like to do some budget management as well as continue to improve the team, could well appeal to him, especially given that, per Cot's Contracts, the Dodgers are already WAY over the lux tax at $265M for this year.

Per Fangraphs, as a third-time (in a row) offender, since they went over last year, they'll pay a ding of 40 percent of whatever they finish the year at above $189M. Now, the team knows that it likely won't get below $189M for 2016, but I'm sure it would like to go lower than now if possible, since, assuming they don't do massive cuts next year, they'll pay 50 percent of anything over $189M in 2016.

Back to trolling fans of one certain team proposing dumb trade materials for the Phillies. This is a serious reason why Friedman wouldn't make a trade for Hamels unless he could dump some salary back. The Dodgers are, by number of repeat years as taxbreakers, in Yankee territory, and by the percentage by which they're breaking the threshold, beyond even the pinstripes. Friedman ain't adding to that.

Yes, you read that right. By Opening Day numbers, the 2014 Dodgers went where the New York Yankees have never, ever gone. And, this year is worse.

That said, contra current rules, I think part of lux tax dings, say 25 percent, should go to revenue sharing.

What we're learning about the masterful, magical Greg Abbott

First of all, he's a professional magician who could put even Penn and Teller to shame. Per his State of the State address, anybody who favors reordering the state's fiscal priorities to do more for schools while at the same time wanting to cut $2 billion from the state's franchise tax is a sleight-of-hand master indeed. That sleight of hand is doubly true when he also urged cutting school property taxes.

Surprised nobody in the Texas GOP has yet invented the phrase "trickle-down property tax cuts."

That's why the likes of a Christy Hoppe are right. There's really nothing to see here but the wizard behind the curtain, trying to straddle Dan Patrick and Joe Straus, so move along, everybody.

Even more wunderbar? Also this, in calling for President Obama not to veto the Congress' Keystone XL bill, along with other GOP governors, Abbott touted the blessings of "good-paying job(s) ... garner(ing) the support of many of our nation's largest labor unions."

Attaboy, Greg. Come out for that good old unionized workingman!

In reality, of course, this is more reason why Hoppe and others are right.

It's also why, after he gets his sea legs (oops, can I say that) as governor, he may be a whole lot more scary than Tricky Ricky Perry. He may be able to peddle snake oil pretty skillfully. It already seems that, with the amount — and skill level — of straddling he's doing, he's got some political skills.

1,000-plus years of Christian Crusades

President Barack Obama has been raked over the coals recently for his mentioning that the Christian Crusades, as well as Islam at times, had their history of brutality.

That said, Obama cut short the history of crusading.

The first crusade wasn't in 1095 but more than 300 years earlier ...

You heard me right.

The wars of Charlemagne against the pagan Saxons to the northeast and Avars to the east, as well as against the Muslims in Spain, were all to some degree Crusades. And bloody, including the killing of nearly 5,000 surrendered Saxon prisoners. After this massacre, Charlemagne promulgated a new law code for dealing with Saxons, that made failure to convert a death penalty offense.

That said, we shouldn't forget that in what is called the First Crusade, as in others, often it was Jews at crusading sword-point, as in 1095, before any other religion.

Speaking of that, though, let's also not overlook that the crusaders of the First Crusade committed cannibalism at the end of one siege in Syria.

After the end of the Crusades as conventionally understood, folks like the Knights of the Sword and Teutonic Knights decided they would convert Baltic peoples — Lithuanians, Letts, Estonians, etc. — with that same point of a sword. Then, just 100 years after, peacefully, a Grand Duke of Lithuania, Vytautas, for the crown of Poland, peacefully took the pledge of Christianity, a whole new vista opened.

American Indians, in the Caribbean, North America and South America, were converted at the point of a sword. African enslaved captives were converted in the grasp of coffles and shackles.

Considering that Ferdinand and Isabella bade Christopher Columbus "godspeed" with the mission of extending Christianity as well as finding riches, and, without a Pope or Inquisition, the British further north in America felt the same, calling this another set of Crusades isn't a stretching of the truth.

If we extend this to the end of the Indian Wars, against Geronimo in the Sonoran Desert and the Sioux at Wounded Knee, it's more like 1,100 years, not 1,000.

And, I've not even mentioned Christians killing Muslims in the name of religion, as well as vice versa, in today's sub-Saharan Africa.

In other words, about as often as church has been associated with state in Christianity as in Islam, there's been religious coercion of some sort.

Another addiction book claims to have "the answer" and doesn't

A few months after reviewing, and strongly critiquing, Carl Hart's "High Price" for, among other things, vastly overselling the "dopamine hypothesis" in particular, as the prime physical cause for alcohol or drug addiction, we're at it again.

Johann Hari claims to have a mix of this, libertarian-driven legalization (also touted by Hart) and theories of two people in the addiction field to have "the answer" in his book.

First, as I've noted elsewhere, legalization is no guaranteed solution, or even a guaranteed partial solution.

Second, it's time to critique Hari's other two ideas and their sources.


Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hari's thesis, that one can mash up Gabor Mate's loneliness with Bruce Alexander's Rat Park, add a dash or two of Carl Hart's acculturalization, and voila, explain, or at times, explain away, addiction, is simplistic at best.

I've critiqued Hart's book here and on my blog, and some of Mate's and Alexander's ideas elsewhere.

First, Mate.

Many people are lonely yet don't become addicted. Some are alone, but not necessarily lonely. Others embrace even some degree of loneliness in an existential way. To the degree that addiction is an emotional disease, it's a far more complex one than just about loneliness.

Alexander? Skeptical question No 1 is, "Which came first, the rat cage or the addiction"? Often, and especially to the partial degree loneliness is intertwined with addiction, the rat cage only comes after a certain point down the road of addiction and is caused by it.

Hart? His "dopamine" ideas are very simplistic. As with others of the "big four" neurotransmitters, our brain cells have several different types of dopamine receptors. Which cause addiction and why? Plus, there's about 100 total neurotransmitters, depending on how you count them.

Beyond that, Hart and Hari both strike me as a little bit of blowhards.

Finally, within the book, Hari contradicts himself.

He talks about US heroin addicts calling methadone bland mush, yet touts Portugal's use of methodone. And, beyond that, he doesn't look carefully at the issue of placebos at all.

View all my reviews

Finally, though I see no actual plagiarization, given Hari's documented history of that, as Wikipedia notes, I have more reason to note the seeming shallowness of this book.

Also, the pompousness of someone who really thinks that, before the age of 25, the world really cares about his opinion on the Iraq War (he was wrong), and the higher pomposity of thinking that, when he changed his mind before 30, he needed to cover his tracks, is a bit — or more than a bit — off-putting.

Beyond that, which was my official Goodreads review plus two added paragraphs about Hari, none of this looks at a BUNCH of other addiction-related issues.

These include:

1. Genetic heritability of a disposition to addiction;
2. Epigenetic heritability of a disposition to addiction;
3. Genetic heritability of tendencies toward high levels of certain emotional states, such as anxiety, which may contribute to a desire to control them by drug or alcohol use that eventually becomes addictive;
4. Epigenetic heritability of tendencies toward high levels of certain emotional states, such as anxiety, which may contribute to a desire to control them by drug or alcohol use that eventually becomes addictive;
5. Chronic emotional affect beyond loneliness, based on sociological family or cultural history, and distinct from genetic or epigenetic tendencies, that may contribute to addictive behavior, or, beyond that, 
6. Family or cultural social learning about addiction itself.
7. More thoughts about physical addictiveness.

Now that I've ticked those off, let's look a bit more at each one.

Genetic heritability, to the degree we can tell so far, not only by separating it from No. 5, cultural and familial tendencies, but No. 2, epigenetic tendencies, and steer away from simplistic "dopamine hypothesis" ideas, has some variability from drug to drug. That, in turn, may have some connection to No. 6, and the relative physical/physiological addictiveness of each. But, given the fact that we don't know a lot about epigenetics of addiction yet, and thus covering No. 2, this is hard to say with much precision.

No. 3 and 4, as paired, fairly parallel No. 1 and 2. How genetically heritable is a disposition to anxiety? The story of someone like Atlantic editor Scott Stossel, painful to read, especially if you have some struggles with anxiety yourself, sounds like it's tailor-made to prove genetic heritability.

But, is it? Epigenetic tags are also heritable, and something like anxiety seems ready-made to be passed along epigenetically. Plus, there's Point 5. If Scott Stossel learned that being a "true Stossel" was to be anxious over a lot of things, social learning has played some part. (I also reject the idea that anxiety, at anywhere near the level he has it, might have some "redemptive" value. I know that it's become a part of sociological human nature to look for such silver linings, but, you know, sometimes they simple don't exist.)

That, in turn, leads to Point 5 further. Is it possible to become "addicted" to depression, or to anxiety? That may sound harsh, but I don't think we should discount it.

Take Stossel, even if it's a bit harsh. If a fair amount of his own severe anxiety is generated by public speaking, then why doesn't he just quit public speaking? It's kind of drastic, but not THAT drastic. And, as editor at the Atlantic, I'm sure he's reasonably fixed financially without public speaking fees. He notes that he has many specific phobias, too. Nonetheless, if he could safety-proof his life more, it might help, I'd think. I don't think he's addicted to it himself, but, nonetheless, the idea of being a "true Stossel" maybe exactly the "redemptive value" he seeks and desires.

That said, Stossel has one damned good thing to say to the likes of Hari, Hart and even Mate and Alexander:

The truth is that anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and culture.

Change “anxiety” to “addiction,” and that shows that this isn’t a “magic solution issue. A good example is Scott's brother, John. I've not heard him discuss having extreme-level or even medium-level anxiety problems. So, heredity, epigenetic heredity and family social psychology, all three, aren't perfect predictors.

Beyond that, on major issues of emotional affect vs. addiction, it's often chicken-vs-egg and hard to determine which is which.

On physical addictiveness, it can be overblown by some, but underplayed by others.

Take nicotine, probably the most addictive drug in use today, whether legal or illegal.

Beloved, but edge-of-the-wire New York Times columnist David Carr died recently from cancer. He was still smoking less than two months before his death, and smoking regularly, not just "chipping." That's despite the fact that, due to previous cancer surgery, he had, to be blunt, just half a neck left.

===

On the governmental side, believing there is "one right answer" to drug use, if wrong, could be very wrong. Let's add in that the US is much, much larger on both size and population than the Netherlands or Portugal, and much, much more ethnically diverse. A "one-size" idea is less likely here.

As far as treating addiction? People who support options in sobriety support should remember that the 12-step movement touts "one answer." Enough said.