Market watch on the manatee

Despite a record number of deaths last year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service -- George Bush's Fish and Wildlife Service that is -- is recommending removing the manatee from the endangered species list, something Florida developers and boating enthusiasts have been lobbying for sometime. This move initially began last year when the Jeb Bush appointed Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recommended the manatee for removal from the list.

And who are some of the luminaries on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission?

Chairman Rodney L. Barreto - Mr. Barreto is owner and president of Barreto Group, a real estate investment and development firm. He is also the founding partner of Floridian Partners, LLC – a strategy-management firm with offices in Miami and Tallahassee – that develops and manages effective corporate and public affairs strategies to achieve specific business results.

Vice Chairman David K. Meehan - Currently, Meehan is president of Bankers Insurance Group. He is vice chairman of the holding company and its subsidiary boards and sits on the holding company’s board of directors. Meehan is also vice chairman and director of First Community Bank of America, Hillsborough County.

Commissioner H.A. Huffman - Huffman is a semi-retired real estate investor. Huffman is a member of the board of directors for Pinnacle Bank of Orange City.

Commissioner Brian S. Yablonski - Yablonski works as the vice president of public affairs for the St. Joe Company. He also serves as an adjunct fellow with the Property and Environment Research Center, of Bozeman, Mont. The center is the nation’s oldest and largest institute working to use market principles to solve environmental problems.

Commissioner Kathy Barco - Barco is president of Barco-Duval Engineering, Inc., a heavy-construction company.

The only environmental expertise this group sports is that some claimed fondness for fishing and hunting and other "outdoor activities," which sounds vaguely like another Republican on the national stage, whose asserted life long penchant for hunting has amounted to shooting a rabbit at age 15 and then some quail 45 years later. Kathy Barco's bio tells us that she is well acquainted with "fish and wildlife management" because "she is active in many outdoor sporting activities." And Yablonski appears to be channeling the Inhofe philosophy: regulations just get in the way of the market's meteoric ability to repair the ailing environment.

Typical Bush. Appoint people to be regulators who have an animus toward regulation and protection; people who have a demonstrable self-interest in rolling back regulation and who spout nonsensical rhetoric that, despite the record of markets and their ill effects on the environment, the market will solve the environmental problems when the reality is that is has been "markets" that have resulted in the need for endangered species lists in the first place.