Feinstein: "Humans Are Losers"

From Investors Business Daily:
Senator Dianne Feinstein voted to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt.
There was a time when the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive agricultural region in the world. It was a large part of what made the Golden State golden.
Now it's a place where farmers no longer farm, but instead line up at food banks to feed the families of those who once fed the rest of the country and a good chunk of the world.
The largest man-made agricultural disaster since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s is unfolding in the valley due to yet another attempt to protect a fish declared to be threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This damage is being done to protect the hypomesus transpacificus, otherwise known as the delta smelt.
Last December the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in its finite wisdom, issued something called a biological opinion imposing water restrictions on the San Joaquin Valley and surrounding areas to protect the habitat of this tiny fish. The authorities forget the species homo sapiens, also part of the ecosystem, is threatened.
Its habitat is being destroyed — by government edict.
To protect the smelt, billions of gallons of water from the mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channeled away from farms and into the ocean, while farmers watched their crops wither and their once-productive land become barren.
Kern County authorities say that 145,000 acres that are usually irrigated with this water were killed or underirrigated last year. The loss was estimated at $100 million in that county alone. The University of California, Davis, estimates that San Joaquin Valley farm revenue losses ranged from $482 million to $647 million. Total economic losses could hit $3 billion this year.
In affected areas, the jobless rate is at 14%, with farming towns such as Mendota experiencing unemployment near 40%. In August, 50 valley mayors signed a letter to President Obama asking him to come and witness the devastation firsthand.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he "doesn't have the authority to turn on the pumps" that the feds have ordered turned off. In June, the administration denied his request to designate California a federal disaster area because of the drought even though the U.S. Drought Monitor lists 43% of the state as being under "severe drought" conditions.