Posted on 07/14/2005 12:15:53 PM PDT by calcowgirl
Irked by state Sen. Sam Aanestad's continuing criticism of his wilderness bill, Rep. Mike Thompson Wednesday said the Grass Valley state legislator was ignorant.
"He doesn't understand the North Coast or its economy," said Thompson, D-Napa Valley, in a telephone interview. Aanestad doesn't understand his bill, either, he added.
Thompson, who represented Butte County in the state Senate before he was elected to Congress, has been promoting legislation to designate as wilderness more than 300,000 acres of land along California's northern coast.
After Thompson introduced his latest version of this bill, House Resolution 233, in January, Aanestad attacked it as "extraordinarily harmful."
Today, the bill is to be heard by a subcommittee of the House Resources Committee. Aanestad planned to be in Washington to testify against it.
The speech Aanestad planned to make is posted on his state Senate Web site. Among other things, the state legislator intended to discuss the dire results of Thompson's bill becoming law: "As has happened in other wilderness areas, forests will grow unmanaged, motor vehicles will be banned and roads will be closed - even for firefighters."
But Thompson said he designed his bill to prevent these things from happening.
He excluded some areas at high risk for fires, he said. And he wrote in provisions allowing the use of all measures available, including mechanical equipment - even bulldozers - to reduce fire hazards and to fight fires that break out.
After Aanestad's attack on his legislation in January, Thompson wrote the state senator a letter, stating, among other things, that all the lands he is proposing for wilderness are already public lands. No land will be taken off the tax rolls, "no legal roads will be closed nor will any legal trails for off-road vehicle use be closed." In addition, no lands available for timber harvesting would be put off limits by the bill, he stated.
In his testimony, Aanestad planned to talk about how environmental regulations and wilderness bills like Thompson's have devastated the economies of many mountain communities in the north state. Before 1990, Aanestad planned to say, more than 140 sawmills provided thousands of jobs throughout the region, but more than 80 of them have closed "thanks to environmental restrictions."
Such rules have also decimated the commercial fishing fleet in Crescent City Harbor. It's gone from 600 to just 60 boats, according to his testimony.
Thompson, however, said his bill would serve the recovery of the coastal fishing industry because wilderness areas would promote the health of endangered salmon and steelhead.
In a news release, Aanestad indicated he was going to bat for officials in Del Norte County who requested his help on the wilderness bill. He accused Thompson of ignoring the wishes of the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors, which voted to oppose HR233.
John Woolley, a member of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, said in four of the five coastal counties affected, supervisors voted to support Thompson's bill. There was unanimous support in his county and Napa County, he said. The vote was 4-0 (with one abstention) in Lake County and 4-1 in Mendocino County. In Del Norte County, the vote was 3-2 against the bill, he said.
Matt Gerien, Thompson's press secretary, said a companion bill to HR233 sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, should pass the Senate within a few days. He said Gov. Schwarzenegger supports the legislation.
Thompson said he's encouraged about his bill's chance of passing. If it doesn't pass, he said, "it won't be because of policy - it will be because of politics."
Aanestad's press secretary, Bill Bird, said the senator's trip to Washington is being paid for by the state Senate. That's appropriate, he said, because Aanestad is on official business, working to protect a part of his district, Del Norte County.
Ping!
Memo to "Red" Thompson: No a-hole, YOU don't understand the North Coast economy and how hippies, yippies, freaks and other urban utopians have ruined it. Ask anyone who used to work at a sawmill.
The real "North Coast" is to be found on the shores of Lake Erie . . .
"He doesn't understand the North Coast or its economy,"
Hmmm, trees, pot, and tourists. I think I've checked off everything.
I sure think GOP_1900AD had got this dudes brainless numbnut's number, don'tchew???
Ok, now let's see some more FReepers come on this thread and try to find any remainging redeeming social value in this lame brain excuse for a Governor!!! You ready newzjunker??? Go for it!!!
We need to also be yelling at this set of idiots.
Thompson is a commie loving, Saddam loving, America hating Watermelon.
He flew to Havana to sing Happy Birthday to Fidel with other commie congressits. Then he and the anti American congressits flew to Baghdad to try and protect their buddy the Soddomite.
Thompson and his cronies in the Sierra Club would like to make everything east of Davis to the Pacific Ocean and north of Davis to the Oregon Border and across to the Pacific an enviral heaven. That enviral heaven would have no roads, no houses except for the elites and tents for their slaves.
Thompson is in bed with every enviral whore and pimp in N California.
"How can a bill like this pass in a GOP-controlled Congress? </sarcasm>"
Watermelon Thompson knows that this bill will not pass. It is his payment to his Sierra Club and other Watermelon Whore backers/voters.
When the bill is killed, he will say that the evil Bush/Rove/Gop Congress killed it. The is same bs your congress critters have done for 4 years re some off the wall pro enviral bill for payback to their supporters.
Hot tang!!! It shur is gud ta see yew back in top rantitative form!!! You da man!!!
BTW, I remember this RAT, Thompson. He used to be my Assemblyman years ago. No, I didn't vote for him!
Don't forget marsh2!
I did! I forgot tubebender too! I'm really slipping!
My apologies, folks. :-)
I have never voted for him and work in the background to make donors to his re elections consider the costs of their donations when the gets out of California.
The mere mention of this commie loving/Watermelon gets me into high rant form.
Here’s a reminder that the reason that some bureaucrats, judges and politicians are attacking private property can be found in the United Nation’s 1,142 page Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA), the nature worshipping bible of the socialists who have infiltrated various government levels.
In this “bible” one will find that the US Constitution stands in the way of perfecting “One World Government.”
The GBA tells us that the high standard of living in developed nations harms the environment and biodioversity. The true believers suggest that the human population needs to be cut back by 67% by reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Doing so will reduce food supplies, causing starvation, and make people more susceptible to mosquito borne illnesses like malaria.
The GBA is based on the United Nation’s Agenda 21. The chief architect of Agenda 21, Gro Harlem Brundtland, has publicly and proudly acknowledged that Agenda 21 is the International Socialist Party’s (ISP) agenda for the 21st century. The ISP is where communists, fascists and socialists breed and try to infect democratic hosts.
The US Senate rejected the GBA, known as the Biodiversity Treaty, in 1994.
In 1997 the President’s Council on Sustainable Development ordered the federal bureaucracy to implement the GBA regardless of the Senate’s rejection and without permission of the Congress or the people.
So if you’re curious why so much socialist and Marxist garbage is spreading over United States property, the answers are in the GBA and Agenda 21. This is where the assorted state and federal Marxists find justification to commit crimes and violence against property owners peacebly going about their business.
Oops. I said Assemblyman, but meant State Senator.
Red vs. Blue. Aanestad is no dummy.
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