After the nightmare progressives call Hope & Change is finally over, it may take years to sort out all the liberties we've lost. Some of the most outrageous encroachments are hardly even reported, having been drowned out by the thunderous artillery aimed at our healthcare system. For example:

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is "fluid" and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn't issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

That's a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

…unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for "marine spatial planning" by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.

The task force apparently consists of radical greenies who can be counted on to put the screws to humans in the name of animals at every possible opportunity.

WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled "Transition Green" shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

If liberal apparatchiks are willing to turn the bountiful San Joaquin Valley into a dustbowl in honor of the delta smelt, they aren't going to pass up a chance to ban fishing.

At least the Obamination Administration gets points for consistency. Every initiative advanced by Comrade Obama could be expected to drive up unemployment. Cracking down on recreational angling is no exception. Reports Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano and a board member at the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation:

"There are over one million jobs in America supported coast to coast by recreational fishing. The task force has not included any accountability requirements in their reports for evaluating or mitigating how the new policies they are drafting will impact the fishing industry or related economies.

"Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable."

But jobs, like freedom, are a price our liberal rulers are more than willing to make us pay for the greater glory of the authoritarian dystopia they plan to construct on America's ashes.




On tips from JustAl and Incitatus. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.