The Highest Paid Arsonists/Eco-Terrorists in America
Memorandum
To: Interested Parties
From: Karen Budd-Falen, Budd-Falen Law Offices, L.L.C.
Date: September 30, 2009
Re: Follow-up to Attorney Fees/Litigation Information
(Note: see [here] for Sept. 15 memo from KBF)
I do not seem to be able to get away from reviewing the environmental group applications for attorney fees and court settlements and keep being shocked by the findings. Since my last memorandum to you:
1. Earthjustice Legal Foundation (a public interest, nonprofit legal foundation) representing Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and Vermont Natural Resources Council has filed an application for attorneys fees in a single case that took 1 year and 3 months to complete for a total of $279,711.40. For that same suit, Western Environmental Law Center (also public interest nonprofit legal foundation) representing Citizens for Better Forestry, Environmental Protection Information Center, Center for Biological Diversity, Wild West Institute, Gifford Pinchot Task Force, Idaho Sporting Congress, Friends of the Clearwater, Utah Environmental Congress, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Wild South, Klamath Kiskiyou Wildlands Center, The Lands Council, Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, Wild Oregon, and Wild Earth Guardians filed an application for attorneys fees for $199,830.65. Thus in TOTAL, the nonprofit, public interest environmental plaintiffs are requesting
$479,242.05 for a single lawsuit lasting 15 months.
There were 7 attorneys representing these nonprofit public interest organizations who charged between $650.00 per hour and $300.00 per hour. These 7 attorneys claimed to have spent 930.05 total hours on the litigation. This was the case where the environmental groups sued the Forest Service over their Forest Service land use planning regulations in 2008. The judge has given the plaintiffs and the Justice Department representing the Forest Service 45 days to settle on the payment of attorneys fees. There were no intervenors from “industry” or other groups involved in the litigation. The case was resolved on the administrative record and motions for summary judgment; there was no evidentiary trial.
After the Forest Service lost the case in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, the Justice Department withdrew the regulations and did not appeal the case. Thus, the total attorneys fees and costs of $479,242.05 only represent work before the Federal District Court.
2. On September 14, 2009, the WildEarth Guardians sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) for issuing 16,734 insurance policies to private landowners for private structures worth approximately 2.7 billion dollars. In that litigation, the WildEarth Guardians have requested that the federal district court stop FEMA from issuing any insurance policies for any structure on any flood plain that is within the geographic range of any threatened or endangered species. One day later, the same group filed the same lawsuit against FEMA in Arizona relating to the issuance of 35,801 policies insuring structures on private property worth approximately 7.7 billion dollars. That litigation also requests the court stop FEMA from ensuring any structures on any flood plain that is within the geographic range of any threatened or endangered species. It is important to understand that it would be impossible for WildEarth Guardians to sue the individual landowners for building these structures on their private land unlessWildEarth Guardians could prove that the construction actually resulted in the death of a species listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. That has not been alleged in this case. Thus, the environmental group is seeking to stop private land use by stopping landowners from getting insurance for legally built structures.
3. According to the Internal Revenue Service, in 2007, the top ten executives for the environmental organizations reported the following salaries and benefits listed below. This information was prepared by David Freddoso, Commentary staff writer and was posted at: www.washingtonexaminer.com September 22, 2009, “Big Green is a Profitable Enterprise.”
Organization - Position - Salary - Retirement Plan/Deferred Compensation - Total
Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. - President - $446,072.00 - $50,102.00 - $496,174.00
World Wildlife Fund - President - $439,327.00 - $47,067.00 - $486,394.00
Natural Resources Defense Council - President - $357,651.00 - $75,308.00 - $432,959.00
Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. - Executive Director - $323,801.00 - $41,972.00 - $365.773.00
Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. - VP West Coast - $325,559.00 - $35,313.00 - $360,872.00
Nature Conservancy - Acting President - $318,507.00 - $30,866.00 - $349,373.00
National Wildlife Federation - President - $309,579.00 - $35,425.00 - $345,004.00
Pew Center on Global Climate Change - President - $311,500.00 - $23,599.00 - $335,099.00
Defenders of Wildlife - President - $254,947.00 - $57,949.00 - $312,896.00
The Wilderness Society - President - $289,750.00 - $18,715.00 - $308,465.00
by Mary
And here I thought greedy insurance companies were the villains in the economy. And those nasty investment bankers. But you had to know that lawyers aid, abet, and guide them. The rapacious billings for “doing the public good” are incredible and repugnant. All that has happened is that a parallel NGO effort, running along side one party in our governance, the Democrats, has left us more broke than we thought. When the money controlled and spent, untaxed money, money collected from public employee unions using government resources, is used to formulate and carry out policy without the oversight of elected officials, or the bureaucracy, it is a rogue government. We are now under a rogue government, and well on our way to being sold down the road to the concept of world governance by our surrender of rule of law in this country.
The very same government that has three permanent US Attorney teams, complete with staffing and offices separate from the rest of the US Attorney effort, in the West to prosecute and claim damages for public resources lost to wildfire from private lands, and at the same time, there is NO — ZERO — opportunity under law for private property owners to recover losses from fire from public lands crossing onto private land to destroy private resources. There is the opportunity to sue, personally, a government employee for damages. Good luck. They have a salary and a retirement. Hardly the resources to recover the loss of a few million dollars.
It is now, these previously United States of America, government for government and by government, and if you don’t like it, tough!! That is the way it is. When this country allowed unions in government at all levels, the accountability to the people, to the governed, was over. Now all fealty is to the party that funds the civil service at the highest possible rates. And, they also allow their parallel government, the NGOs, to operate as political guerrillas using money passed on by government, by untaxed donations, by the mandated spending of trusts and foundations that have to “donate” a finite amount of money each year to keep the tax free status, by back door financing of land sales deals like the Baucus-Plum Creek Timber deal in Montana, where the “facilitators” are the TPL and TNC. All deals have to go through them, and they get a huge “cost of doing business” bonus for every deal. They are the un-needed middle man set up to be funded by Congress for Democrat political purposes. Paybacks for support of Democrat candidates. Pro quid pro.
But when the most admired in their party come from bootlegger criminal families, you get what you get. And now we have Chicago style Presidency, not to be confused with the pizza of the same description. The connected mob rule of this country is here. A President flying a flag of convenience, his ownership in the world not really known. A chief of staff who behaves like an SS general more than an American chief of staff. A very disconcerting closeness to the Bankers of Wall Street, whom this President has literally given the treasure of our grandchildren to keep them solvent. Now they are swapping more phony financial instruments with each other, generating huge profits on paper, and bonus money in the tens of billions for favored traders and highly placed employees. The con job continues. It turns out derivative trading is just betting on stocks and currency, and hedging bets on stocks and currency. There is no “ownership” of anything but the bet. Not unlike selling a jar of farts. And just as tangible if you can get by the smell.
This government is NOT going to follow the law. They will follow whatever suits them, their purposes, and the purposes of their supporters. So sue. They are also stacking the courts each and every day, with judges who will support the law when it is convenient to the left, and make new law when to better serve the left. The American Way. The New Frontier. Bush has been gone almost a year. Is your life better? Is this country better off? Or have we the situation that Captain Lucky Jack Aubrey described to his scientific friend while watching the critters crawl in and out of their hardtack. “Which weevil would you pick, Stephen?” “The larger one” he replied. And Captain Aubrey replied that he “would pick the lesser of the two weevils.” That was so American, and so well spoken by a Brit. We are governed by the lesser of two weevils. Both eat your bread and piss on your bread. They can’t help themselves.
The power of this litigation industry run for profit, not for any benefit to man or nature, is sometimes used to extort Forest Service compliance as in, “If you don’t close 80% of the roads through the Travel Management Plan so we can more easily cause you to designate more roadless and wilderness areas, we’ll sue to get it done”. We pay for much of this in taxes and lost natural resources while the war chests of the extortionists and their salaries grow large.