it's actually Moonbeam and Pulosi who are at fault,plus the bunch of Green Idiots,who turn red if you scratch them!

Who contends that the decision to save what amounts to a couple buckets of minnows rather than use the water to save thousands of acres of what has been the most fertile farm land is a "government conspiracy"? It's a fact that the choice was to save some minnows rather than the farm land.

Who has said the drought is the fault of anything other than mother nature? What is at question is whether what mother nature causes or creates should be altered in order to benefit humans rather than save those fish.

If the contentions is that what mother nature causes or creates in regards to water shouldn't be altered in order to benefit humans then New Orleans wouldn't exist. The Panama cannel, the Soo Locks between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes, the Hoover Damn and many other containment and diversions of water for human benefit wouldn't exist.

If the contentions is that what mother nature causes or creates in regards to water shouldn't be altered in order to benefit humans then New Orleans wouldn't exist. The Panama cannel, the Soo Locks between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes, the Hoover Damn and many other containment and diversions of water for human benefit wouldn't exist.

This particular situation isn't about whether or not people should or shouldn't manipulate the environment.

It's about what exact choices are best for how they are already manipulating it.

Anyone arguing otherwise needs to bow out, because they are off the mark.

Trump either thinks, or is pretending to think, that the water which IS BEING DIVERTED ALREADY should be diverted in different amounts than it is being diverted.

He apparently (according to what's been posted here) chose to claim that there is no drought. His message might have been designed (as many have been) to pander to the prejudices of the audience he was addressing. He certainly managed to appeal to the prejudices of some people here.

There is a drought. The water resources of California have ALWAYS required mindful and artificial management, in order to achieve all they have, because there has never been enough water falling on the state, to supply all it's needs. South California especially, depends almost entirely, on Colorado for it's water needs.

The reason why political hacks who want to side with the farmers (to buy their votes) pretend that the other side is purposely "dumping fresh water in the ocean to protect tiny fish," isn't because they are being honest or honorable. It is because "fresh water" has ALWAYS been "dumping" itself into the sea.

THAT'S WHAT A RIVER IS. Every river system "dumps fresh water into the ocean" eventually.

The only real question here, which is too subtle for the political hacks to be willing to address intelligently, is whether or not the exact decisions about how much water to divert, are for the best.

By attacking it as though it's an all-or-nothing situation, as though it's all about people versus little fish, people are purposely turning the entire debate into a collection of political lies and propaganda maneuvers.

It's damn irresponsible.

the people and farmers come first... how subtle does that need to be?

70 percent of California’s rainfall “washes out to sea” every year..for a minnow.



California is dumping trillions of gallons of fresh water into the ocean, creating a man-made disaster, to protect an non-endangered bait fish.

Send some of those my way Cali....would catch the hell outta white perch

I agree with that statement, as far as it goes.

The problem is, it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't address the concern here.

I have not seen any conclusive information showing that the CLAIM that 100% of the fight is over putting the little fish ahead of the farmers.

That is the oppositions CLAIM.

here are some things which need to be included to make a rational decision, instead of a political one:

* Has there been any serious research into where exactly the little fish fits into the ecology? There have been MANY instances where people ASSUMED that they could wipe some small creatures out, only to discover later that by doing so, a chain reaction was set in motion which destroyed another valuable resource, or even damaged the very interests which wanted to ignore the eliminated critter.

I KNOW Trump hasn't bothered to check, because he would have SAID SO.

* Is that little fish REALLY the only reason for ALL of the restrictions? Trump implies it is, but that's standard political manipulation. California has had water management issues for at least my entire life, and probably from a very long time before I was born. Certain specific wildlife have played a PART in it, but overall, the big picture has always been the real issue, and that's being ignored, by pretending it's all about the fishy.

Has anyone bothered to check and see if Trumps's accusations, which some people here are blindly backing, are remotely accurate?

I've seen no evidence presented here to suggest that they have.

It's easy to make simplistic self-righteous statements like "the farmers are people, and people are more important than fish." The left-wing zealots that the cluster of anti-liberals here keep imagining are threatening them, say crap like that all the time. They aren't valid arguments when the Left uses them,and they are every bit as invalid when the Right does.

If you'd checked,you'd seen that those "Accusations" didn't start with Trump,and that it is indeed those little Feeshies who upset the whole Applecart,or should I say Watercart?
Even Pelosi is concerned about those non-endangered Minnows,to the point that California wastes Billions of Gallons of Freshwater that could be put to better use,than to flow unchecked into the Ocean!

http://www.city-journal.org/html/california's-water-wars-13400.html

California’s water wars aren’t about scarcity. Even with 37 million people and the nation’s most irrigation-intensive agriculture, the state usually has enough water for both people and crops, thanks to the brilliant hydrological engineering of past generations of Californians. But now there is a new element in the century-old water calculus: a demand that the state’s inland waters flow as pristinely as they supposedly did before the age of dams, reservoirs, and canals. Only that way can California’s rivers, descending from their mountain origins, reach the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta year-round. Only that way, environmentalists say, can a three-inch delta fish be saved and salmon runs from the Pacific to the interior restored.

Such green dreams are not new to California politics. But their consequences, in this case, have been particularly dire: rich farmland idled, workers laid off, and massive tax revenues forfeited. Worse still, they coincide with a $25 billion annual state deficit, an overtaxed and fleeing elite populace, unsustainable pension obligations for public employees, a growing population of illegal aliens—and a world food shortage. This insolvent state is in far too much trouble to predicate its agricultural future on fish.



In late summer 2007, a federal judge in Fresno, Oliver Wanger, finally ruled in favor of an environmentalist lawsuit demanding that the federal government curtail its water deliveries to the West Side by 80 percent and more. The suit involved salmon and especially the three-inch delta smelt, a fragile, short-lived fish. The number of smelt in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta had plummeted over the years, the environmentalists claimed, because the California water projects had diverted far too much northern freshwater away from the delta, leading to lower oxygen levels there and ruining the ecosystem; in addition, the huge pumps that sent the water around the delta supposedly destroyed young smelt populations. The solution was to shut down the irrigation pumps, allowing California rivers to flow year-round—not just in the wet season—to the delta and the sea.

So in 2008 and 2009, water deliveries to farmers were reduced to a fraction of their prior levels. Chaos followed. Thousands of acres of irrigated crops were idled. Farmworkers were laid off. Adding to the scarcity was that 2007 and 2008 proved drier than usual. In some cases, newly developed orchards and vineyards on the West Side died without summer irrigation—often near the frequently traveled north-south I-5 freeway, where thousands of passing motorists daily saw both dead trees and signs erected by angry landowners proclaiming man-made dust bowl. Yet despite the cutoffs, the delta smelt did not rebound much.

It could be said other "political hacks" who side with the environmentalist isn't because they are honest or honorable. It isn't because they care about some little fish, it's because they care about votes too. But unlike you I won't do that because I don't pretend to know everyone's motivation for what they do. Besides that I highly doubt that there are enough votes "to buy" from the farming community to sway an election for a TRUE political hack to side with them.

The fact is there are people who have put a little fish ahead of the interests of the farmers. Who put a little fish ahead of some of the MOST productive agricultural land in the nation. Agricultural land the helps feed people. Do I think people who want to protect the fish want to see people go hungry? No, because I don't make ridiculously unfounded claims about people I disagree with.

If diverting the water was for lawns and/or water golf courses it would be a different issue and I would side with environmentalist. But that isn't the case.

Your incessant claims that anyone who isn't on YOUR side of an issue or disagrees with you lacks intelligence is nothing but a display of arrogance. To suggest that something is said that you don't agree with is a lie and propaganda isn't a show of intellectual superiority, it shows a lack of respect for other views.

you say all this like you've done anything to back up what your saying... in any thread, i might add... no one seems to be paying attention to you anyway, since you can't seem to come up with any little bit of real info to back up what you're talking about...

You begin very rationally, and then you decide to ignore what I did and didn't say, before finally dismantling your own reasoning almost entirely, in order to say insulting and false things about me.

I agree that there are "environmentalists," (which I put in quotation marks to differentiate between POLITICAL "environmentalists," who are NOT rational scientists, and ACTUAL Environmentalists, who are), who blindly insist on making restrictions on human needs, because it is a part of their distorted viewpoint that all people are "bad."

I did not take their side. You only pretend I did, because I didn't support the equally thoughtless and prejudiced other extreme, who want to pretend that there is no drought, or who want to completely ignore ecological concerns, simply because the fish in question is small.

I support rationality. Period. That means, that if it can be shown, by people who actually know what they are talking about, that the problem of the fish in question is NOT due to the water shortage (which IS real), then indeed, restricting water usage to help them isn't the thing to do. If it can be shown that, inexplicably, these small fish are NOT an intrinsic and integrated part of the California waterway ecology (that is, that removing them entirely wont lead to other undesirable changes), then we can ignore that they are seemingly endangered.

If all that is true, and the ONLY reason for the restrictions is a fish which may or may not be endangered, and which may or may not be necessary, and there are NO other reasons, that would still not make it factually correct to declare that there's no drought.

What this thread has instead been about so far, is political egotism, and voter pandering. I do NOT support that.

Bottomless Stupidity by the California Officials,coupled with that idiotic Environ-mental-ism!

I DIDN'T say you took anyone's "side" on this issue.
I took umbrage with the way you referred to the people who sided with the farmers calling them "political hacks" and accused them of buying votes.
I find the way you incessantly engage in name calling and refer to people who don't agree with your POV as lacking intelligence, accusing them of engaging in "political lies" and using "propaganda maneuvers". IMO saying those things about those you disagree with is arrogant and show a lack of respect.

I DON'T have a problem with your POV, even when I disagree. My problem is with your consistent defamatory and degrading comments about others. Name calling isn't rational, especially when views are based on opinion rather than fact, PERIOD.


Get it??????