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Heads or Tails?

Given the fever pitch on Social Security and to a lesser extent bankruptcy reform, I can understand if the judicial nomination hearings on William Myers III are being ignored outside the Beltway. Unlike other appointments, Myers’s issues on civil rights and abortion are not in the cross-hairs. Instead, it is his record as the Solicitor of the Interior Department. Gale Norton has been on the Sierra Club hit list for a long time, and Myers was selected by her to be the top attorney for the DOI in 2001. Before he resigned, the DOI tried to end a contentious legal dispute with a man named Harvey Frank Robbins Jr. in Wyoming.

Robbins comes from a powerful industrial family in northwestern Alabama. And surprise, the elder Robbinses are big Republican donors. Junior arrived in Wyoming in 1994, buying the High Island Ranch near Hamilton Dome. The younger Robbins then began to acquire more land culminating with the purchase of the Owl Creek Land Company in 2000. About half the property was fee simple, meaning that the government held no reversionary interest. The other half was Bureau of Land Management leased property. Suffices to say, the BLM can impose regulations on the land it leases, even if you possess it and pay taxes. Robbins ignored every action the BLM would impose, if it was simply warning him for having cattle trespass other land he did not lease or if he had violated grazing quotas for his herd.

After reams of litigation, the DOI hashed out an agreement in Washington DC giving Robbins exemption from many BLM rules. The Inspector General of the DOI since 2001 fingers Myers. However, within two weeks, the inspector, Earl Devaney, claimed that his comments were not intended to single out the Office of the Solicitor. Myers denies he even had anything to do with the settlement to begin with…that of all people an assistant was in charge. So even if this is true, it’s a bit disconcerting that two $12,500 donations by Robbins’s father to the RNC in 2000 allowed the Interior Department in DC to supercede its own Bureau of Land Management. Even though Junior claims to be using his property as a tourist attraction, it probably hasn’t been so profitable as to pay for all this litigation.

It’s possible that Robbins thinks he can test for natural gas or oil perhaps if the BLM is out of the picture. (The Bureau would retain subsurface mineral rights to its land otherwise). Or perhaps Robbins senior had the chip off the old block buy these ranches as a way to hide corporate malfeasance over a decade ago. Then again, Junior could be just that eccentric or eager to be a legal trailblazer.

The DOI voided the agreement in 2004, and Myers resigned long before that. Now the Senate Democrats have to decide if they should invoke the filibuster again to stop his ascension to the Ninth Circuit.

Strategically this is a very tough decision. The Democrats are very close to killing the Bush Social Security privatization gambit. They would prefer to have it die without any perceived sleigh of hand. If the Democrats filibuster Myers however, Bill Frist as Majority Leader has threatened the “nuclear option”: reducing the number of votes needed for cloture of a filibuster from sixty down to fifty. The Democrats have promised to retaliate by using other mechanisms to bring the Senate to a screeching halt. It’s no idle threat.

But if used, it would diminish the impact of the legislation torpedoed by it. Bush is hoping by pushing his judicial nominees AND his Social Security programs that the Democrats will break ranks over which would deliver a more paralyzing defeat for Bush. And if that unity is interrupted, the White House figures both measures pass. The old, heads I win, tails you lose stratagem. And this does not even take into consideration the bankruptcy reform bill bobbing inside the Senate. For the Democrats might have to rely on the filibuster to stop it.

Harry Reid and others were hoping to kill Social Security first, poison pill the bankruptcy bill with an amendment by Charles Schumer about abortion (don’t ask)…and then save the filibuster card to drop Myers and send the Republicans throughout the nation into a tailspin. Don’t be fooled however, Bush is simply doing his best impression of General George Pickett. He knows the enemy lines are thin and if he can muster one more surge, he might break them. But the Democrats also know that they can drag out the bankruptcy bill all week and prevent it from passing. By that time, Bush’s version of Pickett’s Charge will collapse, and save the filibuster weapon until the next vote for Myers. Even if the bankruptcy reform bill passes, the vote need only be delayed until Bush’s energy is exhausted.

The President says that won’t be until he’s visited “60 cities in 60 days”. More like “sixty districts of vulnerable Congressmen in sixty days”. So far he’s visited: Fargo, ND; Great Falls, MT; Omaha, NE; Little Rock, AR; Tampa, FL; Blue Bell, PA; Raleigh, NC; Portsmouth, NH; Westfield, NJ; and South Bend, IN. Bradenton, FL; Roswell, NM; Anchorage, AK; Covington, KY; and Hamilton’s Dome, WY; can’t be far behind.
posted by Thomas at 12:37 AM 0 comments