Just for the fun of it & to illustrate some more of the endless Repugnant hypocrisy , lies & "blame Bill Clinton, now Obama"...........................
Remember James Watt, Reagan's infamous Interior Secretary? The one who was so hostile to protecting the environment?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Watt
The one who quintupled the area leased for coal mining and wanted to open 80 MILLION acres of land to unrestricted mining?
Ah, yes, James Watt. He of "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple" infamy. One of the Reagan Admin's cruelest jokes on the public.
From Bio:
From 1980 through 1982, The Beach Boys and The Grass Roots performed Independence Day concerts on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., attracting large crowds. However, in April 1983, Watt, while serving as Secretary of the Interior, banned Independence Day concerts on the Mall by such groups. Watt said that "rock bands" that had performed on the Mall on Independence Day in 1981 and 1982 had encouraged drug use and alcoholism and had attracted the "the wrong element", who would mug people and families attending any similar events in the future. Watt then announced that Las Vegas crooner Wayne Newton, a friend and supporter of President Reagan and a contributor to Republican Party political campaigns, would perform at the Mall's 1983 Independence Day celebration. During the ensuing uproar, Rob Grill, lead singer of The Grass Roots, stated that he felt "highly insulted" by Watt's remarks, which he called "nothing but un-American".
The Beach Boys stated that the Soviet Union, which had invited them to perform in Leningrad in 1978, "obviously .... did not feel that the group attracted the wrong element". Vice President George H. W. Bush said of The Beach Boys, "They're my friends and I like their music". Watt apologized to The Beach Boys after learning that President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan were fans of the group. Nancy Reagan apologized for Watt. White House staff presented Watt with a plaster foot with a hole in it, symbolizing his having shot himself in the foot with his decision. When Newton entered an Independence Day stage on the Mall on July 4, 1983, members of the audience booed him.
In an interview with the Satellite Program Network, Watt said that "If you want an example of the failure of socialism, don't go to Russia, come to America and go to the Indian reservations."
A public controversy erupted after a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Watt in September 1983, when he mocked affirmative action by saying about a coal-leasing panel: "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent. Within weeks of making this statement, Watt submitted his resignation letter. The next year, The Beach Boys gave an Independence Day concert on the National Mall to an audience of 750,000 people.
Later life
In 1995, Watt was indicted on 25 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice by a federal grand jury. The indictments were due to false statements made to a grand jury investigating influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which he had lobbied in the mid to late 1980s. On January 2, 1996, as part of a plea bargain, Watt pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of withholding documents from a federal grand jury. On March 12, 1996 he was sentenced to five years' probation and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and perform 500 hours of community service.
During a March 1991 dinner event organized by the Green River Cattlemen's Association in Wyoming, Watt said, "If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used. In a 2001 interview, Watt applauded the Bush administration energy strategy and said its prioritization of oil drilling and coal mining above conservation is just what he recommended in the early 1980s. "Everything Cheney's saying, everything the president's saying - they're saying exactly what we were saying 20 years ago, precisely ... Twenty years later, it sounds like they've just dusted off the old work."
