This week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been rebuffed by Republicans and lambasted by liberals, leaving him with very little support on which to stand.
It turns out that the Congressional budget compromise from last Friday, which extracted $38.5 billion in cuts from the bloated budget, had an additional reason to make conservatives cheer.
While conservatives in Congress may have been unable to get a legislative rider to block funding for the EPA, they were successful in blocking any and all funding for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to carry out his "wild lands" decree.
The "wild lands" policy of Salazar's is basically a land grab through regulatory fiat by letting Salazar decide what land is put off-limits to public and private use, rather than let the people's elected representatives in Congress decide how land owned by the American people is used.
According to NPR, Salazar was planning on pronouncing his initial edicts on lands in Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska this summer, but those won't be able to go forward now that Congress has effectively blocked the program.
This comes in a long line of failures of Salazar, which we've detailed quite thoroughly here at The Peak. As we've been saying, it's time to Fire Salazar (click the link to go to the Fire Salazar Facebook page)
To make matters worse, Salazar has also come under assault from a professor at the Colorado School of Mines for his unacceptable and excuse-laden stalling on oil shale R&D. Over at the Colorado "Independent" they highlight Salazar's obstinacy on common sense domestic energy development and his open mouth kiss with environmental wackos.
The article even quotes a letter State Senator Steve King sent to Colorado Senators Udall and Bennet urging a clear and coherent domestic energy policy:
“Salazar’s decision to enter into a wink-and-a-nod settlement with the environmentalist opponents of oil shale and appease them by scoping out a new round of restrictions and royalty requirements is exactly the wrong policy for the Western Slope, for Colorado and indeed for America.”
Even Senator Udall's brother, Randy, head of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, believes Salazar's policy is wrong, saying:
"If private companies want to spend money doing work in that direction, more power to them – as long as it’s done in a balanced and coherent way.”
While previously Salazar may have been able to get away with his bumbling incompetence, with gas prices potentially reaching $5 a gallon by Memorial Day those days of anonymous ineptitude are long gone. Americans want pro-active solutions to this coming energy crisis, not more blathering and inaction.
It's a very bad sign for a Democrat when even the liberal Colorado "Independent" is trashing you. Remember the financial backers of the "Independent" also bankrolled Salazar's campaigns.
Your time is up, Salazar.