Push 'Em Back, Push 'Em Back, Way Back!

Although the reactionary ideologues appointed by the Bush administration to privatize public lands are still up to mischief and will still damage our heritage in their remaining 10 months, you can sense that the resistance is growing in effectiveness.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey avoided going to jail for his agency's refusal to comply with federal court orders on evaluating the safety of fire retardants, but he was forced to stand before Judge Donald Malloy and admit, "We're beyond the point of making excuses and there's no way to put a positive face on the fact that we dropped the ball."

Rey also had to drop his proposed massive restructuring of the Forest Service, one that would have pulled almost all the biologists and other resource specialists out of the national forests and placed them into six regional offices where they could be more closely monitored for sticking to the headquarters' political line even at the expense of the science. On February 20, Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimball announced that the Agency would abandon that plan in order to "avoid additional disruption and confusion." Then the Agency found itself being sued by America's most popular Republican, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for proposing to open up four National Forests in Southern California to roads and oil drilling. California Attorney General Jerry Brown, representing the Governor, said that "the Bush administration is just operating with reckless disregard for the public trust."

Meanwhile, over at the Interior Department, the ride keeps getting rougher. When the Fish and Wildlife Service tried to back out of an agreement to decide whether or not the sage grouse required protection under the Endangered Species Act, the federal courts slapped the Agency down and said, "Comply."

And when Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne decided to "flush" the Grand Canyon with a simulated springtime flood, the rest of the department publicly called the idea ill-timed and poorly planned -- Kempthorne went ahead anyway, but what he had hoped would be a feather in his cap turned into a PR nightmare.

Comments

[AuntSally]

With all eyes trained on the Democratic primary, I'm not surprised BushCo. is going to attempt as much damage as possible.

[JakeEasy]

I guess a good question here would be "Why do republicans hate the earth so much?"

Here in Texas there is a huge chunk of land adjacent to beautiful Big Bend National Park that was purchased and donated to Texas with stipulations as to its use for the public good. Our republican land commissioner wants to sell the land to developers and refuses to sell or donate it to the National Park Service because the don't allow hunting. As a gun-toting (he carries a 22 in his boots) member of the NRA, the land commissioner has said the lands must be used for hunting and shooting or he will not approve the sale.

(Read more here: http://www.thetexasblue.com/gun-held-big-bend-s-head)

[sheila]

why are you so completely freaked out about roads and oil drilling in our nation's wilderness, yet completely supporting total obliteration of hundreds of thousands of fragile desert ecosystem by giant utility-scale "solar farms" and "wind farms" when rooftop PV is more financially sound, safer, more reliable, and allows nature to survive? All we need is a diversion of all that $$$ going to Big Utilities back to our own rooftop systems and we could all afford a roofload...

the joshua tree area is chic, not bleak, and we would all love to have some of our tax dollars supporting oversized systems on our roofs instead of paying your CEERT partners in Big Energy to kill our open spaces forever. we would love to be collecting a check for producing more of that First Rate solar power on our previously developed land that we're using, instead of watching our property values and rural lifestyle circle the drain thanks to greenwashers cheerleading for desert death.

we would love to have NRDC and Sierra Club trying to save Joshua Trees outside the park, too, Carl. In the park is good, and we thank you, but it's not real smart to save the Joshua Trees in the park by KILLING all the ones outside it, you know? especially when there is a win/win option. You know it. I know it. so, are you gonna tell the people or should i?

so how about it? will you steer the Exxon Valdez away from the rocks or will you pour the captain another whiskey and complain some more about how corrupt the Bush Admin is?

[Democrab]

Reminds me of former governut Angus King (independent) of Maine going on TV and stumping for a clear-cutting referendum allowing the paper companies to decimate the beautiful Maine woods and wildlife.

His arguement was "they'll only clear-cut 3 percent a year under this bill."

Everybody in Maine knows the paper companies leave a path of devastation when they clear-cut, and even though they promise to replant and clean up, they never do. They just rape the forest.

Old Angus evidently thought the good people of maine were too stupid to add.

Let's see 3 percent a year X 33 years equals?????

That's right, nothing.

Needless to say, it didn't pass.