Hannity demagogues about San Joaquin farmers' woes, but is happy to let fishermen go down the tubes
Sean Hannity devoted to the entire hour of his Fox News show Thursday to a special reported titled "The Valley That Hope Forgot," all about the water crisis in California's San Joaquin Valley that many right-wingers -- including Sean Hannity -- are blaming on the diversion of water to maintain the fishery on the San Joaquin Delta.
It's actually a classic case of resource juggling: Giving water to the farmers in drought years might keep farmed produce turning, but it would destroy the fishery that supplies millions of fish -- and not just the delta smelt -- to the oceans and ultimately to our food supply. For the time being, the fish have won in the courts. Moreover, there are signs the water is returning to the valley on its own, since the recent drought appears to be subsiding.
Still, Hannity was more interested in demagoguing than in producing an accurate portrait of the situation, let alone helping find a resolution. He blamed the high unemployment rate in the San Joaquin Valley on the lack of water for farmers, and blamed that solely on the delta smelt lawsuits.
Near the end of the show, he had on his usual Intended Liberal Victim, for whom he could reserve such deep journalistic questions as "And I just want to know: How did you get your priorities so screwed up in life? What happened to you?"
But the Intended Victim, a fellow named Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, actually bit back, pointing out how callous and indifferent Hannity was toward the plight of the people on the coast who have traditionally made their livings by fishing salmon, both commercially and recreationally.
Judge for yourself, but it seemed to me Grader got the better of this exchange. Hannity was left to sputter insults at Grader instead of actually addressing his main point: That defending the fishery is a matter of defending people's livelihoods, too. It's not fish vs. people; it's people vs. people.
Doug Obeggi at the Natural Resources Defense Council has a good piece explaining why the whole "delta smelt" claim is a red herring:
First, Endangered Species Act protections for delta smelt aren't just about a tiny fish. Nor are those protections only about protecting the Bay Delta estuary, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas, home to migratory birds on the Pacific Flyway, to magnificent salmon that migrate past the Golden Gate Bridge through the Delta, and to numerous native fish and wildlife.
Moreover, as local economists have pointed out, the recession, not the lack of water, is the cause of the economic downturn in the San Joaquin basin.
And what about the California/Oregon coastal fishermen? The folks whose salmon catch we depend on for food just as much (if not more) than we do produce from the San Joaquin? Well, because of previous mismanagement of the river, the salmon fishery from the Central Valley has seen an unprecedented collapse -- forcing a halt to the California salmon fishery generally.
A California commercial fisherman named Mike Hudson wrote a piece describing what life has been like for people in his line of work:
I’m pretty proud of doing a good job at it.
At least I was until two years ago, when excessive water diversions from our rivers and Delta totally destroyed our industry. In 2004, the Bush Administration issued new permits to allow the Delta pumps to export more water. And as these water exports increased, salmon numbers collapsed. So commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen, Tribes, and environmental groups like NRDC joined together and sued to invalidate those permits, and we successfully won better protections for California's endangered salmon and other fish.
The damage was already done. Thousands of commercial salmon fishermen like myself are now out of work. Our boats stay tied to the docks along the entire California coast all the way into Oregon while tens of thousands more good jobs are lost in businesses that surround our fishing industry. Closing the salmon fishing season affects everyone from processors laying off their fish cutters to marine fuel docks and commercial tackle shops closing their doors. How do you think the local grocery store in Bodega is doing now that all of a sudden 100 hungry commercial fishermen don’t stop by any more to purchase groceries for their next trip and thousands of recreational anglers don’t come to their community any more because there’s no salmon to be caught? Not good.
The Department of Fish and Game estimated that the closure of our commercial salmon fishery cost the state 279 million dollars and nearly 2,600 jobs in 2009, and that’s a conservative estimate at best.
It's not just in the San Joaquin Valley that these disputes over water are occurring. It's also happening in the Bay Area and in the Klamath River basin, where a few years ago the decision by the Bush Administration to divert water away from salmon and to drought-starved farmers resulted in one of the biggest fish kills in the history of the American West.
In reality, the Klamath River boondoggle was part of a larger effort to undermine the Endangered Species Act -- which is the same dynamic at work in the San Joaquin Valley. It's worth remembering too that the Klamath dispute was also a major recruiting ground for "militia/Patriot" radicals.
Thanks to thoughtless demagogues like Sean Hannity, that is more than likely happening at an accelerated rate in northern California these days, too.
Hannity defends both illegal immigrants and corporate farms...I think my heads going to explode now.
"I can't keep doing this on my own with these...people."
save jobs
fire the douchebag hannity and those like him
about 100 gop reichwingnuts fired will save
thousands of jobs.
Hannity proves again and again...he's deaf, dumb and a ignorant ASS!!
I can't really say I feel sorry for people who live in the desert and complain about there not being enough water.
By the way, if you're "not eating", then you have the "freedom" to pick up and migrate like they did back in the old days. There's nothing in the Constitution that says you have to stay in the same town your whole life.
I can't really feel sorry for people that hire Mexicans and complain about Mexicans coming across the border when they dump their waste water back into the Colorado and let it run into and pollute Mexico's lands, thus driving more workers across the border.
My geography was way off this time. I was thinking of the area east of the Salton Sea.
The San Joaquin Valley is NOT a desert.
The valley only gets 10-14 inches of rain a year. It also has groundwater problems due to farmers using as many pumps as they can afford and not rationing water at all.
San Joaquin Valley is not a desert because the GOVERNMENT pumps water from other sources into it. Many places in California are like this. Los Angeles is indeed a desert and could not support a city if not producing a desert from what once were fertile lands. That is the irony of Hannity's argument. He is railing against a inefficient government screwing people that have for generations counted on a government program. The government turned off the taps, because the taps were put in by the government and Hannity wants big government to turn on the taps for HIS broadcast area at the expense of someone else's. I say tear out the tap, let the fishermen and the farmers deal with it. Let the Colorado River decide where it flows, or whichever source San Joachin uses for water. Unlike Hannity, I am for limited government of the people. Hannity loves large overbearing corporate government, with no bill of rights. Controlled by a leader born in a foreign country. Australia!
thought of all of f**ked noise having to do a " walkabout " in the never-never land would be a dream come true .
every time you throw a little mud , you lose a little ground .
He is just an opportunist with a microphone.
The whole story or the truth never really interests him.
The problems with the Delta are so complex and far reaching that simplifying them down to 'this is only about little fish' is so idiotic that only FOX viewers will enjoy his new cause du jour.
So Hannity demands this guy respond to his question but when Hannity can't answer his point about the salmon fishermen he tries to whip the crowd into an angry frenzy to drown out the question. Hillarious. Hannity is a million laughs.
dealt it.
who cares how the deta "smelt" anyway?
Hmmmmm....this looks like its about food one way or the other,... animal or vegetable...
who will prevail? vegetarians?...or the fish hunters?...
I'm a sushi fan myself!!!
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
90 % of all the top FISH STOCK HAVE BEEN REMOVED since 1950.
fish farms.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
...you know that they feed them a meal that doesn't resemble fish and that it is loaded with antibiotics.
pesticides, GMO foods, salmonella on spinach from mexico, hormone laden beef, processed foods, + fluoride in the water, and adjuvants in vaccines...(gotta be real careful these days i agree totally)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
we're screwed.
...I hear the average male sperm count is only several points higher than Hannity's I.Q.
I dont have a link though.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
unsavory things. Catch up with the controversy. Don't try to swim against the current.
n/t
Hey powdered toast man...why don't you crawl back under your rock...no one gives a flying f#ck about you or any of your asinine comments...what a douche bag....
whats your "problem" (I said I was a sushi fan)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Same old "debate" tactics, same old "arguments." Hannity and Bill-O and people like them argue the same way time and again. They take a very complex issue and strip it down to black-and-white, us-vs-them, good-vs-evil nonsense. Does anyone with a college degree or at least a handful of functioning neurons watch these tools?
Vegetarian farmers vs. fisherman who kill ...tonite @ eleven on fox!
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
You seem like a turd to me.
sense of shame so...
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
I'm actually a pretty liberal guy, and began to feel a sense of shame calling myself a democrat a couple years ago.
What if I told you you should hang your head in shame because you belong to the same party as Lieberman, Specter, Pelosi, Conyers, Ried, and Baucus?
What if I told you that Obama and the democrats are a bunch of fascists who favor a merger of govt and "the corporate"? (as is evidenced by the "bankster bailout with no oversite" that Obama voted for)
people who support Obama or call themselves democrats are the ones who should hang in shame...
Teabaggers however, ...should just let em hang!
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
And if you want to endorse the madness, psychosis, and ignorance of the teabaggers, be my guest. Just don't expect me to take you seriously.
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
Lieberman and Specter are dems? Coulda fooled me.
Unfortunately, the "D" has become the flag of convenience for politicians who can't stoop quite low enough to fit in with the neanderthals of the right.
I just cannot stand this jerk. He doesn't listen to the other side of an argument, just loudly talking over what someone has to say.
He did basically the same thing to Juan Williams in an earlier C&L post today.....just completely dismissed Juan Williams' arguments about ACORN and why insannity won't go after Blackwater/XE.
This jerk does this all the time. We need more people like Zeke Grader calling out these asswipes. I wish more politicians would be like this and just call these people out.
Fuck Hannity.
The people who watch Hannity and take him seriously are deranged and either don't want to know the truth or are to stupid to care. Either way they will never change. Fuck them too.
and hannity doesnt know shit from whats between his ears
the water issues in the valley have very little to do with evil enviromentalists....and everything to do with the politics of power
water has been power since this state was first founded
the water prob in the state couldve been dealt with years ago...but we have insane people in sacto who refuse to build more reseviors or invest in desalinization plants
btw, many farmers in the valley are still mom and pop operations...and they are the ones really taking it on the chin in this ecomomy
Cali has insane people that think they can grow exponentially.
to mince words (sitemonitor feel free to edit if necessary, obviously, with my total understanding):
Insannity can take his "concern" for us and shove it up his corpulent arse where it belongs! ;)
My Dad was a supervisior of a vineyard for many years. The vineyard was my first home. And some of my remaining memories of my Paternal Unit include him being unhappy that Kern County water was being diverted to provide for Los Angeles County. He'd point to Owens Valley everytime; its climate has been permanently altered and all that. He also was very unhappy with the protection of the kangaroo rat, he'd say that a farmer could lose his land if one of those critters was found on his premisis...
But yeah, we have a water problem. *However* that's not all of it. Harsher than usual winters have wiped out orange crops, and very hot weather has been leaving grapes rotting on the vine. That's leading to job cuts in the long run.
I've heard from people who pick the crops that people are being fired if they accidentally are still working seconds after the work stops for the day. Big agribusiness doesn't want to pay overtime, and they're ruthless in how they enforce that.
So yes, Insannity can go fuck himself.
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
what a punk ,
I remember cat fishing on the delta in the 50's , sailing in the bay , fishing in the bay , yes things have changed . Let me tell you what will change sean , remember that crowd of Ron Paulers that chased your sorry ass down the street , well its going to be this old man kicking your ass down the street punk .
Any bets he does not know where it goes from salt water to fresh water .
every time you throw a little mud , you lose a little ground .
As a resident of the real Northern California the impact of the reduced fishing season has been traumatic up here. Since the need for forest products has been greatly diminished by the pop of the housing bubble, fishing, tourism and reefer are about the only things holding this part of the world together, and now fishing has been effectively eliminated as well. I sympathize with the farmers in the central valley and Oregon but that water is owned by the public, not factory farms growing subsidized crops. Our rivers should not run at temperatures usually reserved for hot tubs because there's too little flow to keep them cool.
I'd really like to see that asshat Hannity come up here and do his little dance. Unfortunately we've got our share of idiot teabaggers but I can think of a few fisherman and their families who'd like to clue him in a little.
Hannity cares about farmers but not fishermen? And he says they're not eating? They looked nice and fat and in pretty good spirits to me.
1. Does Sean realize that a LARGE percentage of people who work the fields of Jouaquin Valley are illegal immigrant migrant workers? Is he now defending them? If so, that's great.
2. Does he understand the value/importance of fragile ecosystems? Starting with the bloody minnow?
Okay, 3 things.. Sean is a dipshit of the highest order.
took up the cause of the poor of this valley, who often are illegal! :D
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
Sadly, not one of his idiotic listeners will get the irony. Oh yeah, sorry I spelled "San Joaquin" wrong. I know better, lived in the area for 25 years.
he mispelled it too. Plus, typos happen! ;) And you're so right. It'll go right over their heads.
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
you have to point out the obvious , oh right its sean , let him keep fighting for the cause , he wont know the difference anyway .
And what is with these jerks , it always appears that they have a pen in their hand yet never write anthing , must be a in-toe- lectral thang .
every time you throw a little mud , you lose a little ground .
Fox news characters always choose subject matter that somehow would interfere with the abilities of corporations to make money and make it a whipping-boy. What a tool.
Huzzah for Zeke Grader, who performed well under the worst and most dishonest of interview conditions. Notice the chuckling that went on from the crowd when Hannity announced he was in San Francisco. Every real Murcan knows that no one in San Francisco could be a real American.
I only made it to 2:53 into the video before I felt the need to practice my Qi Gong.
Sean Manatee couldn't grasp a situation if it sat still in the palm of his hand.
I'm sure it must have just slipped Sean's mind to mention the fact that since the droughts in SE Asia over the last two years and the spike in wholesale prices for rice, the valley has seen a massive increase in rice growing.
Rice is not only one of the most water hungry crops (can you say "evaporation"), rice gets government price supports AND the farmers get subsidized water AND very little of the crop is used domestically - it's mostly for export.
Facts - funny things those.
FACT is another 4 letter word you won't hear on FOX NEWS.
Hannity is moron
Looked like Sean was really enjoys himself pitting farmers against fishermen. What’s next on your agenda Sean, cattlemen against sheep herders on the BLM’s? Sean will forever be trapped in the 20th century. It’s past time for these ignorant dimwits to just STFU already.
Did anyone else notice at 2:15 how Hannity turned and tried to get the audience all riled up to make noise and drown out his "guest"?. I just don't understand how this guy has an audience at all!
Faux News stock in trade. And as for how Hannity or any of the douchebags on there has an audience, its because the "audience" has no ability to think for themselves or use reason. Most have less IQ points than an average 5 year old. All they can do is engage in screaming and yelling and allowing themselves to be used by big corporations such as healthcare, big pharma, mega agribusiness, etc. They don't get that they are merely pawns and not one of these big corporations, including their rightwing radio and cable networks don't give a damn about any of them.
Hannity and people like him are sociopaths. They don't *care* about the real ramifications of the issues they talk about. It's all just a game to them. They're sick.
But putting that multi-million dollar paycheck into his account every month, and reflecting on what his viewership wants from him, quickly erases any type of desire to be reasonable.
Fox people actually think this is an actual interview. If I had known that Hannity would have a whole crowd of zombies behind him (as the interviews on Fox usually go-he usually has two Repubs and/or one supposed Dem to counter one liberal) I would not have done this interview. (maybe he didn't know this) Most of what Grader mentioned was drowned out by the zombies-probably on purpose as per Hannity's command. I don't think this is a great victory for a progressive voice at all, but then again, this is a Fox show. That network will never be fair and balanced as they claim to be.
I don't understand why anyone would give him the time of day. You can just tell he doesn't give a crap about any views that might conflict with or shoot down his agenda, so just like every other interview, he has to interrupt and shout down his guests. Heaven forbid they might have a valid point.
This is not journalism or even basic news. It's just plain right wing propaganda, just like the rest of Fox News and the teabaggers.
The fact this person can become a millionaire by being a conservative prick makes me sick. There is nothing else to say except this bozo is a waste of time and energy, and if you want an example of what is wrong with America, watch his show.
But I won't be watching.
It makes me actually sad that this dipshit could actually be the mouthpiece of the far right Republicans (not to mention all the other many, many, national, regional and local rightwingers who broadcast their party's dogma-unfettered while we progressives/liberals have to try and find the local college station that carries Democracy Now, or pay to hear Air America on XM/Sirius) every single day of the week for how many hours he does his "show." When I hear people call in and say "Sean, I just love and what you've done for our country..." it just makes me sick. How could this be?! How can these people actually think this turd is good for the country!!?
What kind of neandrathal listens to these people. It high time that large numbers of people have the guts (like President Carter) to call a spade a spade. This clowns have escalated this art form of theirs into the theatrics of the stupid. True Republicans must start a movement to disavow themselves from the fringe that has taken over their party. There has to a small number of statesman left in the GOP that can band together and call out the idiocy of the remnants of their party. There must be some constiuency left, that is sick and tired of all this foolishness. The list of caricature representatives and unelected representative on Fox and radio shows must be overwhelming sincere and logical Republicans that feel the need to graple the reigns away from these clowns. You will actually find sympathy and support from Democrats. The resurrection of the GOP must come from within; but, not without a complete break from the insanity that is what is defined as the GOP now. Real Republicans owe it to America.
GOP and statesman.......now that would have to be classified as an endangered species.
A so called free market clown like Hannity should be asking just how much those farmers are paying for their water. How much?
They get heavily government subsidized water for next to nothing and then they sell it off for profit. Most of these farmers are huge corporations that make a mint selling water and then more when selling their lands. My wife used to work for sod farm and the owner flew everywhere in a private jet. Their company sure wasn't hurting nor did it ever lack water to grow grass for new golf courses in the desert.
This whole myth of the poor family farmer getting the shaft from the gubmint is a crock of fertilizer. It smells like Modesto.
Ok? We're so smitten with Fox News that we're letting Sean Hannity pick the battles? Maybe we should all be watching less Fox News. I honestly don't care.
Dave points this out, but it bears underlining - Zeke Grader is the chief spokesman for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermens' Associations. These aren't sports fishing guys going off the coast for a few fish on a good weekend, or fly fishermen in the rivers - these are commercial salmon fishermen, who used to make a good living from the sea. And their fleet is down by something like 25,000 boats over the last three decades off the West Coast, thanks to the destruction of our fisheries, especially salmon. There are plenty of actual mockable SF enviros Fox could have hauled in for a bit of ritual abuse, but the fact that they just stupidly, lazily spewed all over PCFFA demonstrates (one.more.time.) that the facts are entirely beside the point to these lizardbrains.
Oh, and for chrissake, what about the TRIBES? Especially up on the Klamath, where four whole peoples whose existence as cultures is critically dependent on the survival of _their_ fish? Oh, right - they're pretty brown. And the original Other.
None of which is to say that I buy a half-second of the deeply stupid idea that utility to humans is or should be the measure of the importance of natural systems. I'd blow those pumps in the Delta as soon as spit if I thought it would keep the smelt - and ALL THE OTHER CRITTERS similarly dependent on functioning rivers (including not just salmon, but killer whales, say federal biologists) from passing into the eternal silence of extinction.
Notwithstanding Obeggi's "magnificant" salmon plea, things are very complicated in the California Delta, and things are complicated for salmon all the way up the coast to Alaska. Hannity's methods are predictably useless rhetoric on pro-property rights, but the pro-salmon folks as an opposition misses the point, too. "Magnificent" salmon are stressed far north of California. Salmon are a global issue, water rights in California are a state issue.
"Doug Obeggi at the Natural Resources Defense Council has a good piece explaining why the whole "delta smelt" claim is a red herring:"
That sounds fishy to me... I'm sure it leaves many Floundering ;)
Study the symptoms not the virus...
I'm surprised that Hannity didn't pit Central California farmers against the elite Hollywood crowd given that Southern California is one of the largest consumers of the relatively small quantities of water available from the Sierra Nevada run-off partly due to ever complex climate change. Not to mention the amount of water diverted from the Colorado River into Southern Calfornia which continues to violate agreed upon maximum limits set with other dependent states such as Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and the losers of the battle for the Colorado River-Northern Mexico.
I don't mean to singularly blame the population growth of Southern California, though. Water is a sparce natural resource in the Western U.S. that many important groups such as So Cal depend on.
Salmon fishing is an important part of California's 57 billion dollar agricultural industry. But so is the Valley, which produces more diverse speciality crops (almonds, strawberry's, artichoke, etc.) than the entire Nation providing 10-20% of the U.S.'s produce depending on the year. Still, jumbo corporate farms/dairies, poor ecological considerations, and misguided government incentives are causing problems that deserve critical review. Ironic how the perfect metaphor for the nature of our inter-dependence is what this fight is about.
I don't expect Hannity to try to understand that water rights allocation in California, as in other parts of the globe, is a complex issue due to a dizzying web of culture, economics, and geography. But who would Hannity have to attack if he realized that instead of "us vs. them," it's really just "us vs. us" ?
add to the misery by having mercury levels higher than tolerable in all the water tables that get water from the coastal range of mountains. The government has cleaned up 10 or 12 of the 550 mines. But they admit that there are probably well in excess of 2000 mercury mines that are still moving their waste to the water table that feeds the delta, the aqueduct system, and the drinking water.
Don't think you have it better if you live far to the south, as that is Colorado river water! That has the uranium run off. What about the ground water of Southern California? It's not too good a story either. If there was an airport or a military base anywhere near you, your water is likely to contain all kinds of fun.
Here are a couple of examples that have been known for at least 30 years. Florida. There has been so much dumping of jet fuel and other toxic material that the water table is not repairable by the labor of men. In Orange County, California, the old marine base called El Toro put so much crap into the ground water that all the cities surrounding it have poisoned water and can't draw from it. They have to try to clean all that they send in and out, while the poisoned water is ignored, dripping a few more thousands of gallons a minute into the water supply. You know how they fixed that? They closed the base, and then made houses there for people to live in over the slag.
Find out more about the $77 million water sale ( $5,500 an acre foot!) by a "farmer" to Mojave water district here: The Water Privateers Kathryn Gray http://www.counterpunch.org/gray08272009.html
How's about an attractive woman to approach Hannity, or people at FOX, for sex? Show their responses on a hidden camera. Watch the fur fly. Look, they've picked off Van Jones and Acorn in the last two weeks. Time to commit some outrages of our own.
is a disgusting worm. Water will replace oil as a reason for going to war. We use and waste too much of it and the days of growing food the desert are just about over. This battle was fought in southern Oregon a few years ago and at that time, Cheney got directly involved in ensuring water rights to farmers that grow foods in a desert.
Comments are closed on this entry