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Pentagon Ordered DEP To Maintain Secrecy 

DEP Lied To The Pinelands Commission, The Media, And The Public

Part One: The Maps Set The Stage

Source: NJDEP.
Note the date: April 2020

After weeks of delay, the DEP has finally responded to my Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request for government documents on military funding of DEP forestry projects in the Pinelands.

Today, I will begin the series describing the deeply troubling  information I obtained from these documents. Among other things:

• The documents tell a story of how the US military has a cozy relationship with and behind the scenes exerts a huge and hidden influence over DEP public lands management and conservation policies and practices, not only in the Pinelands but along the NJ coast as well;

• The documents show that the military funding drives DEP priorities and land management practices – including the location of projects – far more than any public preferences and/or the policies stated in official DEP plans and regulations;

• The documents show that the military ordered DEP to keep the military funding, military objectives, and project scope secret, and that DEP acceded to the military’s secrecy request;

• The documents show that, in order to comply with the military secrecy demand, that DEP misled the Pinelands Commission, and submitted intentionally misleading and materially false regulatory documents to the Pinelands Commission, including a highly unusual letter from DEP Commissioner LaTourette that threatened a lawsuit if the Commission failed to quickly approve the DEP plan;

• The documents show that DEP lied to the media and the public about the military objectives and funding of their Forest Management Plan and that DEP provided a false rationale to support the project to mask these military objectives;

• The documents show that DEP falsely claimed in the military REPI grant application that their Pinelands Forestry plan had received “all permits”, long BEFORE the Pinelands Commission approved the DEP plan on October 14, 2022;

• The documents show – similar to how inappropriate military equipment is provided to local police forces – that DEP used military money to buy industrial commercial logging equipment;

• The documents show that DEP defined the “project” to include 1.2 million acres, thereby setting the stage for dramatic future expansion and ongoing military funding; and

• The documents strongly suggest that conservation groups who actively supported and publicly promoted the DEP forestry plan – one of whom is identified as a “partner” by the military in the REPI program – were either duped by the military or also knowingly lied to the Pinelands Commission, media, and public about the military funding and objectives.

It’s all bad: for forestry, its log and burn to protect the military bases.

On “climate resilience” (flooding, shore protection, etc), the DEP protects military assets more than people and public infrastructure, in terms of where they conduct projects and the projects they pursue.

[Only after the military allowed them to, on February 22, 2023, DEP issued a highly spun press release, long after the fact, that obscures the actual project (which even had different names) and the timing on REPI funding and Pinelands Commission approval. This is more a a self disclosed coverup than an honest press statement. I sense that DEP did this to try to get out front of my disclosures, as I previously had written about the military angle in November. ]

We will break all this down in this series, as I disclose the contents of the military and DEP documents.

To begin Part One today, before I discuss the text of the documents, I will first post  just a few maps of the program, which are extremely revealing. These are all DEP maps submitted as part of the military REPI grant applications. The full DEP OPRA response is available upon request.

Readers should closely examine how land is described and classified (e.g. “military influence area”), the names of the projects, and the dates on the maps:

Note that this map has no date.

Note date: July 2022

Note date: November 2022 (conflicts with prior REPI grant application and other maps

But A Bank Blows Up And Biden Can’t Bail Out The Rich Fast Enough

Always Trillions For Banks, Wall Street, And War

There is no better contrast to expose the current economic and political reality in the United States today than to compare the response of President Biden to the East Palestine toxic train catastrophe versus his response to the Silicon Valley Bank.

The backdrop being $113 billion to wage a proxy war in Ukraine and a record near trillion dollar Pentagon budget to prepare for another war with China.

Biden flew thousands of miles to Ukraine to promise even more.

Trillions for banks, billionaires, speculators, and war – including even paying the pensions of Ukrainian civil servants – but didley squat for the people of East Palestine.

Old “AMTRAK Joe” couldn’t hop a train to Ohio (but Bi-partisan Joe and his corporate Dems moved almost as quickly to crush the railroad workers union).

Deregulation for the banks and the railroads!

Subsidies and investment for the high tech suburban Silicon Valleys, deindustrialization and disinvestment for manufacturing and the rural Rust Belt.

(take a look at what Neoliberal policies (e.g. deregulation, privatization, globalization – free-trade agreements, austerity, et al) and corporate finance capitalism have done to northeastern Ohio rust belt towns, look:

• “Infrastructure” Scenes From Main Street In Northeast Ohio That Biden And Media Didn’t Depict

What the hell is going on here?

An entire generation of self described “progressives”, “activists”, Movement for Black Lives, and other social and economic justice advocates seem to have missed the US history class when the works of Dr. King were presented.

What else could explain not only the total invisibility of an anti-war movement, but actual SUPPORT for the war?

And it’s Not only SUPPORT for the war, but ugly scenes where so called “progressives” actually SHOUT DOWN war protesters who are attempting to hold Congresspersons accountable for their votes in support of the war.

Down Orwell’s Memory Hole is the history of how Dr. King excoriated war, and not only for the immoral and evil murder and destruction it caused but for the diversion of billions from LBJ’s “Great Society” to the Pentagon war budget.

In his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech – exactly one year before and the likely cause of his murder – King said:

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. […]

We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. […]

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

All while real journalists – i.e. Sy Hersh, the man who broke the My Lai massacre story among many others – are forced to publish anti-war war crime stories on Substack.

What the hell is going on here?

Vehicle Fleet Turnover Is Very Slow, Unless More Aggressive Mandates Are Adopted

Basic Math Ignored

Intro Note:

The fake corporate funded EV cheerleaders won’t say anything about this corporate investment, which exposes the fact that absolutely nothing is changing under the “green” economy. Bloomberg reports:

• Tesla Mexico Plant Means $10 Billion Investment

The news reports and cheerleading of climate activists are not telling the full story on the challenges of electric vehicles (EV) as a technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And I don’t mean merely the totally unrealistic goals and timetables for EV sales and bans on sales of new gas/diesel vehicles; or the lack of charging infrastructure; opposition by car dealers; or lack of consumer confidence.

By failing to tell the full story, they propagate and allow false notions and unrealistic expectations to persist.

They fail to even talk about the other side of the electric vehicle fleet coin: the retirement of existing internal combustion vehicles ( we joked about that 15 years ago, see:

• Corzine applauds New Carbon Control Corporation – Cash for Clunkers at Home – Major Benefits for NJ

This neglect of the other side of the coin means that necessary more comprehensive and stronger policy tools are not even on the table.

One example: why not mandate at least a 1:1 buyback and retirement of an internal combustion vehicle for every EV sold, and do so as part of the EV sale?

That kind of mandate could also address the extremely regressive nature of the entire EV program and its subsidies, which benefit upper income drivers at the expense of lower income groups. 

The fact of the matter is that, even if the unrealistic EV sales goals are met and sales of new internal combustion (gas and diesel fueled) vehicles are banned, that does not mean that that the vehicle fleet will even come close to being 100% electric. Similarly unrealistic expectations are stoked by false assumptions that there will be significant reductions in total vehicle GHG emissions.

That’s because the lifespan of an internal combustion vehicle is long (20-30 years) and increasing, so the fleet turnover is very slow.

The NY Times reports:

Around the world, governments and automakers are focused on selling newer, cleaner electric vehicles as a key solution to climate change. Yet it could take years, if not decades, before the technology has a drastic effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

One reason for that? It will take a long time for all the existing gasoline-powered vehicles on the road to reach the end of their life spans.

This “fleet turnover” can be slow, analysts said, because conventional gasoline-powered cars and trucks are becoming more reliable, breaking down less often and lasting longer on the road. The average light-duty vehicle operating in the United States today is 12 years old, according to IHS Markit, an economic forecasting firm. That’s up from 9.6 years old in 2002.

Those facts mean that far more comprehensive and aggressive policies are required (unless the goal is just to pretend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). 

What kind of policies?

Why is the corporate mainstream NY Times outlining a more intelligent and aggressive policy agenda than the so called climate activists:

policymakers may need to consider additional strategies to clean up transportation, experts said. That could include policies to buy back and scrap older, less efficient cars already in use. It could also include strategies to reduce Americans’ dependence on car travel, such as expanding public transit or encouraging biking and walking, so that existing vehicles are driven less often.

“There’s an enormous amount of inertia in the system to overcome,” said Abdullah Alarfaj, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University who led a recent study that examined how slow vehicle turnover could be a barrier to quickly cutting emissions from passenger vehicles.

It is amazing that these “additional strategies” are presented as novel. The legal and policy framework to implement them has been in place for over 40 years.

Back in the day, environmentalists used to think more broadly and focus on the integration of land use, transportation, and clean air planning and regulatory strategies. (and I don’t mean merely seeking to stop diversions of Clean Energy Funds to NJ Transit!)

In fact, the Clean Air Act mandates exactly that and the NJ DEP is required to develop and enforce a State Implementation Plan (SIP) that has regulatory teeth to attain these integrated clean air and transportation goals.

But environmentalists, climate activists, and the media have largely abandoned work on those planning and regulatory programs – particularly land use – in favor of a narrow and blatantly commercial focus on the EV program.

It is likely that industry funding of the EV cheerleaders has had a huge impact on that narrowing focus (that means you, Doug O’Malley:

ChargEVC, made up of car manufacturers, technology companies, utilities, consumer advocates and non-government organizations, serves as the singular voice of a compelling message. …

The diversity of CHARGEVC is what makes the organization so valuable. Our members represent the key players that are crucial to shaping electric vehicle growth in a sound and sustainable manner. (my emphasis)

As a result, DEP is given a pass and gets completely captured by regulated industries and adoption and enforcement of SIP standards are neutered.

Like I’ve written many times, this another example of how we are actually going backwards on the policy frontier.

Any reasonable doubt was eliminated by Biden Secretary of Interior Haaland’s Senate Confirmation testimony and her capitulation to hostile questions in March.

(NJ Gov. Murphy has a similarly cynical token identity politics agency head, the first openly gay DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette, who is a former corporate lawyer and worked for major polluters. Identity politics oriented climate and environmental activists and media have given LaTourette a pass. It seems that Democrats can make corporate revolving door appointments to key Agency positions with impunity, but when Republicans do the same thing, it’s immediately condemned as corrupt, “fox guarding the hen house”, “agency capture”. )

In April, we predicted the fraud would only get worse and more obvious:

I’m expecting to see pipelines receive subsidies and “streamlined regulatory review” under Biden’s infrastructure plan. I’ve already read quotes from Sect. Transportation Buttigieg that included pipelines in the definition of infrastructure. And Biden supported the gas industry before the US supreme Court, see:

• Biden PennEast Pipeline Betrayal Tests NJ Gov. Murphy’s Climate Commitments

This is exactly the policy Joe’s mentor, Barack Obama implemented – which we also criticized at the time despite all the environmental group praise.

We quoted Obama’s own absurd words, see:

Under my administration, America is producing more oil than at any time in the last eight years. We’ve opened up new areas for exploration. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some,” Obama said (source)

(NJ Gov. Murphy has a similarly hypocritical record, where his DEP approved major fossil infrastructure projects.)

So, on July 12, 2021, after even more evidence of the Biden climate fraud had mounted – e.g. the AP story on Biden drilling permits – we wrote about it:

• Biden Is A Climate Fraud

Perhaps if climate activists had some semblance of a grasp of policy and politics, they would not have played the inside game with Biden and the AOC crowd  – even after they sabotaged Bernie – twice! – and abandoned the Green New Deal – and they would not be feeling betrayed by Biden’s latest climate fraud.

(NJ climate activists are similarly duped and have been cheerleaders for NJ Gov. Murphy and his corporate lawyer DEP Commissioner, despite their record).

Instead of inside political games with the Democrats, perhaps they will now organize and mobilize militant protest and civil disobedience.

I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen –

My goodness, NJ climate activists are being praised by NJ media for having a phone call with the Murphy DEP, so the bar can not get any lower.

Senate Environment Committee Quietly Tables Bill To Create Green Bank

An unusual and embarrassing setback for Gov. Murphy

The Senate Environment Committee met today – the Agenda for the hearing included S3603, a bill to create a Green Bank and implement Gov. Murphy’s proposal.

I wrote about the flaws in that bill yesterday and contacted the sponsor and Chairman Smith to request that the bill be held, see:

• Legislation To Create Murphy “Green Bank” Considered By Senate

Surprisingly, the Senate Environment Committee held the bill today.

Chairman Smith offered this cover story – very casually minimizing an embarrassing set back for Gov. Murphy’s Green Bank:

A couple of changes to the agenda …. On today’s agenda, we have Senator Singleton’s bill, S3603. Once we posted it, he started getting calls about what’s the right group to be administering the money he wants to set aside for sustainability, green issues in the State. So he asked that we take it down so he could do a little additional research. And we’re always happy to do that. We like to do it right the first time.

I have no doubt that Senator Singleton and Chairman Smith got calls about the bill.

But I seriously doubt that those calls were from “sustainability” groups and that the issue of concern was “what’s the right group to be administering the money”.

Chairman Smith did not mention when the bill will be back on the agenda.

Smith failed even discuss the bill or pledge his support for the idea of a Green Bank.

Chairman Smith did not mention that the bill is designed to implement Gov. Murphy’s Green Bank initiative.

On February 28, 2023, Gov. Murphy announced the Green Bank in his budget plan:

The Governor is also proposing over $50 million in new resources to grow the green economy, including $12 million more for the Clean Energy Program that previously went to NJ TRANSIT and a $40 million Green Fund that can leverage both private capital and federal funds.

Last week, the Green Bank was praised by Gov. Murphy’s “green” cheerleaders: (NJ Spotlight)

The Murphy administration aims to leverage federal dollars, state money and private capital to create a so-called Green Fund that could potentially finance hundreds of millions of dollars in climate action projects over the next decade.

The initiative, announced with few details by Gov. Phil Murphy in his fiscal year 2024 budget plan last week, would start with $40 million and seek to capitalize on the billions of dollars expected to be made available to states, communities and nonprofits as result of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The law allocates $370 billion nationwide to a wide range of programs to address climate change.

Right out of the box, we blasted the Green Bank as a cynical ploy and criticized the Gov. cheerleaders.

The fact that the Committee held the bill without discussion or testimony so soon after the Gov. announced the Green Bank initiative is an unusual and embarrassing political setback.

It suggests technical incompetence in working with Senator Singleton in drafting the bill and a lack of political commitment to the Green Bank initiative. This confirms exactly what I initially criticized: that the whole thing is more of a political ploy than a serious policy initiative.

The Governor, his staff, and the DEP have consistently proven to be more adept at green rhetoric than green policy.

Is the bill dead or just in limbo?

The obvious question becomes: Who killed Gov. Murphy’s Green Bank trial balloon and why did they do so?

I strongly doubt it was my email opposing the bill.

So, who done it?

[End Note: In addition to the 8 points of criticism I made on the bill, I failed to mention perhaps the biggest flaw.

The Green Bank allocation of what could be billions of federal and state tax dollars is not in any way linked to any clear policy or plan.

In comparison, the NJ Environmental Infrastructure Trust funds are legally linked to DEP prepared plans under the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinkning Water Act and federal State Revolving Fund appropriations by Congress.

The lack of any goals, planning, policy, or regulation to guide the Green Bank investments and allocations is an open invitation to corruption, patronage and pay to play.