Nunes fingers Smelt Number One Cause of Great Recession

WASHINGTON -- A visibly relieved House Rules Committee on Tuesday finally found the cause of the global Great Recession. The truth was uttered by Rep. Devin Nunes, Manic Seer-CA.
And surely the congressman should know because he speaks from the epicenter of destruction in the nation from the foreclosure crisis -- the San Joaquin Valley. He carries the further authority of being a Republican, the party in power when the crisis first broke.
We last heard from Nunes on this subject in the summer of 2009 during the period of the "man-made drought" in California. With every eastside reservoir and Southern California reservoir full, it was kind of hard to tell which "men" Nunes was talking about, but it was certain that the men who own him -- the same then as now -- are from finance, insurance and real estate (agribusiness and developers) special interests. These "men" rally their political pieces like Nunes against environmental laws and regulations that protect creatures like the Delta Smelt from extinction. Finance, insurance and real estate special interests and their congressional minions honor these laws very highly by routinely  breaching them. So, actually, insorfar as there were water curtailments that year to protect the environment as mandated by law, it was a "law-made" water shortage and what Nunes is braying against is law.
Although a sober survey done by University of Pacific's Eberhardt School of Business noted that in August 2009 four of the top 10 metro areas for foreclosure rates in the nation were in the San Joaquin Valley and all its cities were within the top 200 cities in the nation for foreclosure rates. The school's Business Forecasting Center also noted that the best estimate for job losses in agriculture from water shortages was 6,000, while they estimated 47,000 jobs lost in construction. They also surveyed the steadily rising percentage of unemployment in the little farmworker towns on the west side of the Valley, disproving the notion that the modestly curtailed water deliveries to some water districts had suddenly caused a severe rise in unemployment.
Today, before members of the Rules Committee, once again Nunes gasped and induced gasping when he mentioned 40-percent rates of unemployment, rates which are now annual, typical, and accepted in our Irrigation Society, which steadily concentrates land ownership and wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Because all water is about the most local thing there is, we cannot expect members of Congress not from the arid West to have a clue what Nunes is talking about. He also mentioned job losses from another dry year would run between 30-60,000. This is as big a lie as his claim of "up to 80,000 jobs lost" in 2009.
But, best of all, Nunes brought to all members of Congress who have suffered so deeply with the pain of their constituencies, few hit as hard as Nunes' own by the foreclosure crisis, what all mortals need if they are to accept their fates: a reason. That reason is Public Enemy No. 1, Hypomesus transpacificus, aka "Delta Smelt" or, simply, "The Fish."
Granted the global financial crisis presents a most bewildering array of forces, tendencies, securitized financial instruments, and streams of conflicting propaganda that any normal member of Congress has a right to say he or she doesn't really understand it all, and kind of think to his- or herself that maybe not understanding the financlal crisis is a sign of mental health. No person can handle prolonged conflicts like having doubts when you're accepting large chunks of cash from finance, insurance and real estate special interests (never forgetting than farmers and ranchers, at least in California, are landowners first, noble tillers of the soil and raisers of livestock, a distant second).
If one adds to this internal conflict the situation Congress finds itself in at the moment -- less trusted and liked than at any time in the memory of living Americans -- we might conjecture that there is a kind of collective mania in those undemocratic halls where the plutocrats' political pieces clash in the dark.
We saw evidence of that today in the Rules Committee hearing on HR 1837, Nunes' bill to override California state law and the federal judiciary for the benefit of the plutocratic hedge fund that owns him. Others in similar life situations sympathized with him, identified to him, listened to his manic ravings until they heard the Word: If only we can sacrifice the Evil Little Fish -- I mean EXTIRPATE IT! -- WIPE IT OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH so that it will contaminate no man-made irrigation empire ever again -- Properity Will Return, and not, my Brothers and my Sisters, just my prosperity but yours as well ...
because we all realize alone before dawn that the larger and more outrageous liar you are, the more money and power you will amass in the US Congress.