Executive summary: a bunch of people in Marin County, California made a serious mistake, forty years ago. To wit, they trusted the federal government to honor an agreement by which the Drakes Bay Oyster Company transferred ownership of their land (in order to protect the wetlands from development) in exchange for 40 year leases on that land in perpetuity. Several years ago, the folks who later bought Drakes Bay discovered that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar didn’t particularly care about that:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/52331881?color=01AAEA

Essentially, the Drakes Bay Oyster Company people discovered that they had wasted a lot of time trying to argue that the ‘science’ used to defend the National Parks Service’s decision to not renew their lease was bad. What they should have been doing was pumping enough money into Obama for America’s campaign coffers to make Ken Salazar decide in their favor, and not in Big Green’s*. So: company out of business, local economy suffers, and one more data point supporting the thesis Never trust the federal government on anything. Well done, Obama administration. Well done.

On the bright side? While this ruling will have a subtle yet noticeable degrading effect on people’s quality of life, the fact that this is happening in Marin County, California means that it will disproportionately affect Democrats. This is what you voted for, folks. This is precisely what you voted for. By a three to one margin, in fact.

Bon appetit.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Needless to say, there’s a big… dear God. Big Green wants to develop the area into a theme park (excuse me: “America’s only West Coast marine wilderness park”), and they’re having Ken Salazar shut down all those pesky plucky independent owner-operators like Drakes Bay Oyster. I guess that the Greenies stared into the Abyss for just a little too long…