Why BLM HQ Moved to CO, Saule Omarova, & More

Here's the latest dispatch.

Nov 19, 2021

Good afternoon!

Welcome to Outsider on the Inside. I hope this dispatch from in and around the nation’s capital on underreported topics finds you well.

If you’re just discovering my musings, here’s a backgrounder.

Here’s what I have for you today:

Relocating BLM HQ Out West Was Based in True Conservation, Not Racism

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report claims the 2019 relocation of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) headquarters out West undermined the agency.

“BLM lacks reasonable assurance the agency will have the workforce necessary to achieve its goals in managing millions of acres of public lands,” their report concluded.

Predictably, media outlets like the Washington Post suggested the Trump-era policy was rooted in racism.

In September, Biden’s Interior Department announced it would transfer most operations back to the nation’s capital—despite opposition from Western governors and local stakeholders.

Why was BLM HQ originally moved out West, and was the decision rooted in racism? Is the move’s impact being overblown by critics? Here are the facts.

BLM Should Be Close to Those Living Near Public Lands

According to one former BLM careerist, the management culture is historically “corrupt, regressive, biased, and secretive.” A management culture, mind you, that has largely operated out of D.C.

Imagine that?

If an agency moves away from Washington and becomes more accountable to local partners and stakeholders, that decision should be celebrated — not derided.

How can employees effectively manage public lands from afar—especially being thousands of miles away in Washington? They can’t without maintaining a strong presence in the Western U.S.

Remember Obama’s BLM? His agency imposed a controversial rule, Planning 2.0, giving the federal government “too much influence over public land decisions and marginalizes state and local input.”

The Biden administration would be wise to listen to those directly impacted by BLM policies— not be influenced by special interest groups concentrated out this way.

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BidenNoms, A Project of AAF @bidennoms

Biden nominee Saule Omarova saying the quiet part out loud. On the oil, coal and gas industries: "We want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change."

Omarova’s Collectivist Views Don’t Belong At OCC

Saule Omarova, a Kazakh-born Cornell University professor and President Joe Biden’s nominee for Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), supports radical central planning views opposed by the majority of Americans.

The OCC is tasked with regulating national banks and federal savings associations. If Ms. Omarova is confirmed to this post, she will undoubtedly pursue collectivist policies that undermine our financial institutions.

Omarova is an Avowed Anti-Capitalist

“Build Back Better” will morph into “Build Back Bankrupt” if Omarova is to oversee the OCC, given her anti-capitalist Marxist views.

As a student at Moscow State University, she wrote a thesis entitled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital.”

The university claims the sole copy of her dissertation was deleted from its archives. This leaves us without any clues into the views that could have shaped her thinking.

Omarova’s grad school writings aren’t the only concerning things she’s said or written on the banking system. She also believes the Federal Reserve should “effectively end[ing] banking as we know it” by replacing all private bank deposits with central bank accounts.

In her October 2020 paper, The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy, she argued for the “comprehensive restructuring of the central bank balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance.”

IWF Senior Fellow Carrie Shieffield correctly points out Ms. Omarova’s penchant for Soviet economics and the disdain she harbors for the banking industry.

Sheffield observed, “Omarova showed her hostility and bias against the very banking sector she would potentially oversee, calling financial services “a quintessential asshole industry.” In a documentary with the same vulgarity in the title,” Omarova assaults what she calls “the pervasiveness of systematically asshole-type behavior” of financial services professionals who “continue to pursue their own private goals, their own insatiable appetite for private gain.””