Fish Passage Barriers and Stimulus
Let’s return to RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s efforts to destroy the economy:
Democrats in Congress want a one-trillion dollar spending bill. You’ve heard about the pork-barrel programs they want to fund… 45 million dollars for ATV trails and removal of fish passage barriers is one that caught my eye. Exactly what is a fish passage barrier and why does it cost 45 million dollars to stimulate the economy with it?
I don’t recognize the phrase off the top of my head, but common sense would indicate that you remove a fish passage barrier in order to let fish cross through someplace. A google image search revealed this:
Since the funds were for the removal of fish passage barriers, it’s not clear to me why Steele is even asking about why we would stimulate the economy with a fish passage barrier. He not only can’t bother to look up what a fish passage barrier is, but he can’t recall from one sentence to the next whether he’s mocking the idea of creating them or mocking the idea of removing them.
With everything in this debate, though, if you understand what’s happening you understand that the point isn’t that a reduction in the number of fish passage barriers will stimulate the economy. The point is that to stimulate the economy you need to identify projects that will employ people and materials. But ideally we don’t want to employ people and materials doing something totally pointless. Removing fish passage barriers will, I assume, have environmental benefits and ensure the long-term viability of fish populations. That’s good for the fish, probably good for water quality, and probably beneficial to people whose livelihoods depend on fishing or the viability of the tourism and recreation industries.
35 Responses to “Fish Passage Barriers and Stimulus”
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February 7th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
More info on what fish passage barrier removal entails, that is in fact the first hit returned if you google “fish passage barrier removal”
February 7th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
In point of fact, 45 million dollars for fish passage barrier removal is about the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of.
Yes we have to spend the money on SOMEthing but for God’s sake what about roads and bridges etc. instead of this?
Leaving aside the question of: why should we put the needs of fish above the needs of unemployed people, how about considering if it’s appropriate to remove the barriers. I mean the barriers were put there for a reason, right?? Or if the barriers are natural they are presumably part of the ecosystem by now. Incompatible species could be mixed together. It’d be like removing the barrier between the Jets and the Sharks, or something.
Even granting that the stimulus package needs to be passed quickly (which I don’t agree, but that’s another argument), for goodness’ sake let’s try to avoid doing actual HARM with the projects.
February 7th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Floyd, that’s like saying that money spent on agriculture only benefits vegetables.
February 7th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I mean the barriers were put there for a reason, right??
Oh, FAC, we bow at your feet.
The barriers were put up at the insistence of WC Fields. He’s gone now.
February 7th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
That’s good for the fish, probably good for water quality, and probably beneficial to people whose livelihoods depend on fishing or the viability of the tourism and recreation industries.
Also, good for those of us who enjoy nice, tasty, wild salmon.
February 7th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
The point is that to stimulate the economy you need to identify projects that will employ people and materials. But ideally we don’t want to employ people and materials doing something totally pointless.
Does it bother anyone else that the subtext here is that, while not ideal, it is helpful to the economy to employ people and materials doing something really pointless?
February 7th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Ask an Oregonian how pointless it is to improve the environment to increase the number of salmon. It is not “pointless” anymore than digging irrigation ditches for farmland is pointless. No swimming upstream, no spawning, no fish, no fishing industry, no future for fishing industry, no future fish to eat.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I never heard of fish barriers until tonight either, but I guess it makes sense and it’s a big issue up in places wherer they still have good fishing, like Washington State.
Why mock something before you know what it is?
…and of course men and women will work to do the redesign of the culvert (fish barrier removal), the moving of the earth, the laying of the foundations, the concrete, yada yada.
…what’s wrong with THOSE jobs, Mr. Steele? As it now stands, the only way for a man to make a decent buck is to run off to Afghanistan or Iraq.
Yeah, Republicans.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
“But ideally we don’t want to employ people and materials doing something totally pointless.”
Totally pointless…
…like waging wars where we don’t belong,
…like tracking down weed that ought to be legal,
while real crooks go free,
…like jailing 300,000 just for smoking that weed and letting Madoff sit in his penthouse,
…like listening to our phone calls and our emails,
…like giving a bailout to the Wall Street crooks, but not helping a laid off worker get unemployment and health care.
February 7th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
If that’s a photograph of an actual fish barrier being removed, I can have that done for a few thousand bucks. You form around each end of the culvert and fill it with concrete.
Total time wasted, maybe 1 day. Lots and lots of jobs there.
February 8th, 2009 at 12:09 am
Sometimes it takes an effort to find the fish barriers, and the solution is not so simple as removing concrete. It’s not as simple as looking at this picture and imagining that you know how to solve the problem.
February 8th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Keynes more or less said that spending great big chunks of the budget on building pyramids or recovering from earthquake damage would be better than doing nothing.
So, no, it’s not “subtext.” And yes, I imagine it might bother someone who doesn’t agree with Keynes’ ideas on economic recovery. But there are fewer and fewer of those folks nowadays, eh?
February 8th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Glaivester,
The noted radical economist Paul Sweezy, back in the ’60s, argued that the Keynesian theory of “stimulating the economy by throwing money at something completely useless” was more or less the function of the bloated and gigantic U.S. military.
I mean, really, what’s the function of waging wars in places like Vietnam? What’s the function of producing massive amounts of military hardware that we then give away free to right wing tyrants to oppress their people? Military hardware aren’t productive (capital) goods, nor are they consumer goods, if anything they’re “means of destruction”, not means of production. But they carry out a vital economic function of stimulating the economy, employing people, and so forth….it’s irrelevant that they hire those people and use those resources to carry out functions which are morally atrocious and which contribute nothing to the public good.
All of you guys should take a look at Sweezy’s “Monopoly Capital”, particularly the chapter on “military Keynesianism”. He predicts today’s economic crisis pretty well.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:50 am
….and if anyone chimes in with burblings about how the U.S. military ‘defends our freedoms’, I’m going to laugh.
February 8th, 2009 at 11:53 am
If that’s a photograph of an actual fish barrier being removed, I can have that done for a few thousand bucks. You form around each end of the culvert and fill it with concrete.
…and then spend millions for the flood damage that results! Stimulus! No wonder you are called the Last Honest Man in Washington!
The point is lots of roads and flood control projects were done without thought to their impact on the environment. Redoing them properly will create jobs in the short term and restore fisheries in the long term, which will save jobs. In addition, it gives poorly informed morons something to make fun of.
It’s a win-win-win!
February 8th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I can maybe see the fish barriers… maybe. But, ATV trails?! you have got to be kidding!
February 8th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Does it bother anyone else that the subtext here is that, while not ideal, it is helpful to the economy to employ people and materials doing something really pointless?
What’s bothersome is people who spend 100% of their time with asphalt under their feet thinking removing fish passage barriers is just busy work. Clueless about anything beyond the city limits. Hell, you can’t even get a decent coffee out there, who gives a shit about a bunch (or not) of fish? Doesn’t Dick Cheney have his pick of prime places to fish?
On the other hand, you’d think the GOP leadership would be all about building ATV trails. Their base is. Hell yeah, an loud, spewing, grass-churning ATV in every garage would seem to be right up the GOP’s alley, in stimulus terms.
February 8th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Automatic Mojo: What’s bothersome is people who spend 100% of their time with asphalt under their feet thinking removing fish passage barriers is just busy work.
I should point out that I am not arguing that. I admit that I don’t know enough about fish barriers to know the relative pros and cons of removal. My point is that in the post Matt pointedly does not say that it would be foolish to spend money on something if it were pointless.
Hector: Military hardware aren’t productive (capital) goods, nor are they consumer goods, if anything they’re “means of destruction”, not means of production. But they carry out a vital economic function of stimulating the economy, employing people, and so forth….it’s irrelevant that they hire those people and use those resources to carry out functions which are morally atrocious and which contribute nothing to the public good.
Stimulating the economy may be the intention, but the idea that military spending helps the economy as a whole is dead wrong (except to the extent that the military spending actually enables the military to defend us from something that threatens the economy – to what extent is does that is very debatable). I don’t know if you have read any of my comments about WWII, but I have made it very clear that I do not think that the spending side of WWII is what helped our economy out of the Great Depression.
Keynes more or less said that spending great big chunks of the budget on building pyramids or recovering from earthquake damage would be better than doing nothing.
Keynes was too dishonest or too stupid to understand the “broken window fallacy.”
So, no, it’s not “subtext.”
Okay, so Matt is clearly supporting a stupid idea explicitly rather than implicitly.
And yes, I imagine it might bother someone who doesn’t agree with Keynes’ ideas on economic recovery.
You mean anyone with common sense.
But there are fewer and fewer of those folks nowadays, eh?
Yes, because we are all consumption/debt addicts who will believe anything that tells us that we don’t need as a nation to seriously cut down. We are going through detox right now, and we are being tempted to end the pain by going right back on the bottle. Keynes says that all we need to do is spend, spend, spend, and we will be prosperous. We can avoid the pain! Austerity is bad! Of course lots of people believe Keynes. I suspect that if a person went into a rehab center and offered the patients a rehab plan that invovled taking even larger doses of their addictant than before they went to rehab, and someone else called the plan ridiculous, mot people would listen to the former, and those who listened to the latter would become fewer and fewer as they went further into detox.
February 8th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Glaivester,
Just to clarify, I am not defending what radical critics of the system have often called ‘Military Keynesianism’. Massive government spending on the military does employ people and stimulate the U.S. economy, but it does so in ways that are unproductive and immoral.
February 8th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Hector, I understand that you are against military Keynesianism. What I am saying isthat it does not even stimulate the economy.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:43 am
It doesn’t take much to define what a fish barrier is. It’s a dam. Environmentalists & Democrats have long been advocating removing dams that generate electricity, prevent flooding and control erosion. Hydro power is the cheapest and most renewable method to generate electricity, and fish ladders are apparently not enough to satisfy fish kissers, even though the salmon population is increasing. Washington state’s dams supply Washington, Oregon and California with electricity, so Obama wants the dams removed??? The cleverly disguised “fish passage barrier removal” terminology would be devastating to the economy and citizens of the West. If dams are to be removed,will the Indian gill nets along the Columbia also be removed? Those fish passage barriers deplete the fish population more than any dams which are much farther upstream.
February 11th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
The funds are/were for small to medium size fish passage barriers. That doesn’t include dams, and even if it did, you won’t get that far for $45 million.
Many of the fish passage barriers also pose threats to infrastructure. Take a look at the photo above. How well does that culvert pass water? What happens in the 10, 50, or 100 year flood event? The water likely backs up which causes flooding and possibly threatens to blow out the road.
Finally, as others have mentioned, correcting fish passage barriers involves a lot of blue collar work, from the construction and placement of new bridges to the removal of the offending barrier.
Those are good jobs, and I’m surprised Mr. Steele has it in for the blue collar folks of America.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
What bothers me the most about this article is your attack of Mr. Steele’s lack of clarity and then your abundance of probabilities and assumptions. How arrogant of you to attempt to reprimand someone for “not being sure” when you clearly lack data and knowledge yourself.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
As to the blue collar comment, I find it highly improbable that any party representative would attempt to alienate such a large voting group. That is simply not logical and not founded in any real evidence.
February 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Cat,
Perhaps before Mr. Steele shot his mouth off, he should have done a quick Google search as to what “fish passage barriers” are, and how correcting them can have a stimulant effect.
By choosing to demagogue the issue that they either didn’t think through, Mr. Steele (and others in the Republican Party) have alienated the hard hats that work on these projects that do not appear to have any downside as they are short and long term stimulative, improve infrastructure, and help improve the environment.
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