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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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| <- |
2006-06-01 |
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| Name | Bruce E. Babbitt |
| Address |
, Arizona , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
June 27, 1938
(85 years)
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| Contributor | 411 Name Removed |
| Last Modifed | RBH
Dec 26, 2018 02:29pm |
| Tags |
Caucasian - Married - Catholic - Straight -
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| Info | Bruce Babbitt, President Clinton's Secretary of the Interior, is a former attorney general and former governor of the State of Arizona. Babbitt became governor after one Governor resigned and his replacement died, leaving Babbitt the next in line for the post. In 1988, Babbitt ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, failing to ever register in the double digits in public opinion polls.
As Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt has been one of the Clinton Administration's most unpopular cabinet secretaries -- particularly in the West. Upon taking office he moved quickly to attempt to raise grazing and mining fees on already economically-distressed ranching and mining industries and created over congressional objections the National Biological Service, a agency created to assess the nation's biological resources that too often has -- as congressional opponents feared -- been used to violate landowners' privacy and property rights. Babbitt also assembled a team at Interior openly hostile to the resource-dependent communities of the West. For example, George Frampton, Babbitt's choice for Assistant Secretary of Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks was a former president of the Wilderness Society. Speaking before an Earth Day Press Conference in 1992, Frampton said, "...A group of industries, principally mining, logging and... ranching... for decades have enjoyed enormous federal subsidies to develop and exploit the public lands... We're going to help the environment... And they're fighting back. If you had a license to loot the federal treasury, you'd be fighting to keep it too." One of Secretary Babbitt's most controversial moves, however, was his apparent assault on the Boy Scouts of America. Shortly after joining the Clinton Administration, Secretary Babbitt reinstated a National Park Service order prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the Service's Western Region. Under the order, the Boy Scouts of America -- which does not permit avowed homosexuals to serve as troop leaders -- could have been barred from volunteering in the National Parks. Subsequent public outrage over the Secretary's decision ensured that the Boy Scouts would not be barred from National Parks.
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