The state of California is drowning in multi-billion dollar debt. The state pension system is going bankrupt. The tax receipts have dwindled so decidedly, that Sacramento cannot fund core functions of the state government. The same apparatus which has over-funded agencies up and down the coast has also neglected to promote a viable business climate for fishing operations or to support military operations along the coast.
Notwithstanding the grave issues which are threatening the survival of the state of California, environmentalists are primarily engaged in protecting the sea otter, an endangered species which they claim requires extended space to thrive and frolic for the mammal's population to replenish.
If there is an endangered species that needs protecting, it is the California taxpayer, whose wealth and worth are being wiped out in greater numbers by Big Government, which has placed plant and animal ahead of right and reason.
The Republicans in the House of Representatives have crafted legislation which would limit the boundaries of federal waters for sea otters. Authored by Congressman Elton Gallegy (R-Simi Valley), the Southern Sea Otter Conservation Act identifies the adverse affects to the military and commercial fishing by an expansion of the current federal sea otter sanctuary. To add greater irony to the conflict instigated by the green lobby, the Republican legislation bolsters its extended limitation on a proposed sea otter sanctuary by arguing for the protection of other endangered species: the abalone and the shellfish.
Between the dysfunctional growth of state power coupled with the over-involvement of environmentalist interest groups, the state of California is compromising the rights of the citizenry to protection and commercial investment against the projected expansion of one species, whose proliferation would threaten the recovering numbers of other endangered species.
Congressman Gallegy's legislation strikes an appropriate balance, one which properly recognizes the priority of the taxpayer, including his security and financial stability, while offering extended protection for sea otter and aquatic plant life.
No other bill better exposes the mixed and meandering goals of liberalism in California, an entrenched and enraging ideology which compromises proposals in the best interests of all Californians, but also contradicts the broad and undefined goals of protecting flora and fauna from the necessary and proper policies of human actors.