California's Delta Smelt is Raising Your Food Prices

The Commerce Clause that regulates interstate commerce is at issue in the legal battle of Obamacare. Can the federal government tell individuals that they must buy insurance? Not as well known is how the same commerce clause is destroying farms and raising food prices by stopping the flow of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers to the Central Valley in California. The feds at the urging of the state government has literally turned off the tap, destroying prime farmland in order to benefit the sex lives of the Delta Smelt.

Approximately 85-90% of the water from this primary source has been shut off to the Central Valley. The smelt is a fish so insignificant that no one other than the Bezerkely-enviro-wackos and some local fisherman have heard about this tiny fish.

The smelt is fish that is native to California and, for the most part, is known to fisherman simply as “bait”. The California enviros’ zeal to increase the population of smelt has led to a terrible federal, legal decision that shut down the water to thousands of farmers in the Central Valley; the nation’s largest and most productive farm land. Thousands of farmers there are suffering with unemployment over 20%, scores of farms have been lost and tens of thousands of agricultural workers are now without jobs. If California didn’t have enough economic problems, you can add shooting yourself in the foot. The inmates are now officially running the asylum. If we needed a poster for enviro-insanity it would be the promotion of the lowly smelt over the interests of: farmers, food production, food prices, jobs and California families.

Fortunately, the GOP is now leading the charge is to cut funding for the programs that help the smelt at the expense of the farmers. This could lead to turning on the tap to the farmers. But California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is fighting the farmers; leading the opposition in the Senate and choosing to stand by the smelt over people. The Pacific Legal Foundation, (PLF) a non-profit public interest group has sided with the farmers was recently successful in obtaining a new federal district court decision to force the state to re-examine its justification for turning off the spigot.

On Tuesday, the PLF made their case in front of the Ninth “Circus” Court of Appeals hoping for permanent relief. They argued that the Commerce Clause doesn’t allow the feds to regulate intra-state species (species that don’t cross state lines) with no commercial sales. Let’s just hope the people prevail over the bait, however, with the insane Ninth Circus Court no outcome is certain.