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Posted on 07/28/2007 4:45:54 PM PDT by mdittmar
I say this knowing that I don’t know much at all about this particular outbreak. Even so, we have past history and past behavior of the anti-logging crowd to recall, and I recall that after Mt. St. Helen's destroyed so many trees, that logging was not permitted. Neither was it after a moth infestation in the East some years ago. Let the trees rot, the “sustainable practices” crowd yelled.
AAAHHHHH!
..............A long run of warmer temperatures, Berg said. Though the Kenai Peninsula has experienced warm summers many times during the past century, the warmth “really shifted into overdrive” from 1987 to 1997. Without cool, wet summers to knock down bark beetle populations, millions of beetles flew from tree to tree each spring, boring into the bark of spruce trees and laying eggs................
GLOBAL WARMING!
IT’S BUSHES FAULT!
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
“WOW, so the democrates really are making the changes they promised! What a bunch of loosers!”
They still have 92 hours to go.
I have talked to an entomologist who thinks that the whole bark-beetle matter is overblown. He says that the beetles are not new, and that they attack mainly old and sick trees; that they are part of the normal cycle in woodlands.
He also mentioned that he does not speak up much about this, because he has a government job, and is afraid that he will be canned if he is too outspoken.
Bark Beetles render burned trees useless for conversion to lumber in about 3 years or less. The enviros know this and sue to stop logging fire damaged trees They win most cases but would lose on appeal in many cases but there is no value left so no one appeals...
A waste of money, but it will help Harry get re-elected. Which is all that matters to these people.
I'm not a forester or a biologist but it seems to me the way to get rid of pests is to either kill them or starve them out. The simple truth is, some species need to be extinct (note to pres. Bush - veto funding of the US Senate - or at least their cafeterias).
For reasons unknown, environmentalists prefer to see large tracts of forest laid to waste, to release their lifetime of CO2 absorption back into the atmosphere through natural decay or by fire rather than maintain forest health where living trees would do exactly the opposite.
I have traveled the infested areas of central and eastern Oregon, and they are not small acreages of dead trees here and there, but rather tracts of hundreds of square miles.
The tonnage of CO2 being released by this volume of decaying and burning biomass has to be enormous.
Its called logging and proper forest management. OK, where's my check for $400 K
It is heartbreaking to see the miles of brown, dead pines, in the hills of AZ. What used to be a beautiful forest, is now acres and acres and acres, of brown, dead trees. Just standing there, with no plans to remove the dry, rotted timber.
It's almost unspeakable, let alone unthinkable... And damn depressing to say the least!!!
Good to see that our Democrats are going after the top national security priorities, as per usual.
Terrific. One bug funds another.
“This will be a fun thread, but in fact, these beetles are very destructive.”
Agreed. They have been really hard on Alaska.
I wonder how much will be left after the money has been filtered through his 5 legal-beagle Nevada sons.
Harry Reid's Real Estate Investing Plan
by Mac Johnson
Posted: 10/17/2006
How you can make millions by having Dirty Harry “do nothing” on your behalf? Order now and receive free bonus gift: “Clerical Errors” for Fun and Profit!
Are you stuck in a dead end job so boring that you spend all day at work surfing the web reading witty political commentary? Are you tired of investments that depend on unreliable “market forces” for their returns? Haven’t you always dreamed of a way to make money that was as automatic as the creeping bureaucracy that afflicts our nation’s cash flow like fiscal atherosclerosis?
Well dream no more, friend, because today I am going to let you in on one of the great secrets of American business (and the mainstream media): The Harry Reid Do-Nothing Miracle Investment System! Through this system, you can sit back and watch the cash roll in from questionable desert real estate investments with the sort of reliability that only government can provide. The system is as simple as it is hidden through shell corporations, nepotism and political contributions. Yes, there are just three easy steps to mogul-like millions in Las Vegas real estate:
Find a parcel of land made undesirable by government environmental regulation, utility leases, or simple pesky zoning!
Hire a Reid, invest with a Reid, contribute to a Reid, but above all, know a Reid!
Be patient while Sen. Harry “Papa” Reid does NOTHING UNUSUAL on your behalf and watch those government barriers to wealth melt away! Got a stupid endangered tortoise on your worthless land? Let Harry Reid show the BLM a real “shell game” as that value-killing protected habitat is inexplicably moved miles away!
Want to build a primo strip mall in a residential area? Just have a “Casino Lawyer” drop Papa Reid’s name like a severed horse’s head into the silk sheets of local government. Bada-bing! The zoning changes almost as fast as the value of the land!
Bought thousands of acres of land ruined by a pre-existing government power line lease? Just pick up your personal “power line” to Harry Reid and watch with glee as he does NOT use his influence to push a special bill through Congress. ZAP! The federal right-of-way is moved right out of your way … instant millions!
Think these are just hypothetical sales hype scenarios? No, these are these real life “Reid Estate” transactions.
Real Life Example No. 1: In the early 1990s a helpless corporation, Del Webb, wanted to realize its personal dream and develop some land outside Las Vegas. There was just one problem: the government owned much of it and it wasn’t for sale! Employing the simple Reid Estate wealth building system, Del Webb hired a former Reid aide, donated $18,000 to Harry Reid’s campaign fund and then did the obvious next thing: it purchased “environmentally sensitive” lands 400 miles away near Lake Tahoe. After two letters to the Interior Department from Sen. Reid and a personal meeting organized by him, at which a government employee said he felt “pressured” by Reid, the Interior Department allowed Del Webb and its partners to swap that environmentally valuable land near Lake Tahoe for the environmentally worthless (but commercially valuable) land in Las Vegas. Reid claims to have done nothing unusual.
BAM! Instant value. IT’S JUST THAT EASY TO MAKE MONEY IN REID ESTATE!
Real Life Example No. 2: In a remarkable coincidence, land adjoining the above “swapped” land was then sold by a Del Webb partner to … Sen. Harry Reid and his partner, Jay Brown. The transaction was at fair market value, Reid later stated. Mr. Brown, described by the Associated Press as a “casino lawyer” whose “name has surfaced in federal investigations involving organized crime, casinos and political bribery,” and Sen. Reid wished to develop the land as a strip mall—which would have a much fairer market value than the land they bought, which was zoned strictly residential. A Reid Estate rezoning was called for!
But first Sen. Reid sold his land (for the exact price he had paid for it) to “Patrick Lane,” a limited liability corporation created by Mr. Brown, in exchange for a share of that limited liability corporation. This move created no net value, but coincidentally resulted in Reid’s name being removed from the deed before Mr. Brown went publicly before the zoning board to represent Patrick Lane LLC, a corporation that somehow omitted Mr. Reid’s name from any of its public corporate filings.
When the first board rejected the rezoning as “inconsistent” with Clark County’s Master Development Plan, Brown appealed and the Clark County Zoning Board and the Clark County Commission overruled the decision. Coincidentally, Mr. Brown’s agent had stated to commissioners during the appeal, "Mr. Brown's partner is Harry Reid, so I think we have people in this community who you can trust to go forward and put a quality project before you." Strange—that Reid’s name was so carefully removed from legal documents and then dropped casually in the halls of government—and right before the commission overruled the previous decision. Well, the important thing is that the residential land Reid bought for $400,000 was soon sold for $1.1 million (Reid’s part) as a commercial property. And all because Sen. Reid did nothing unusual. That’s the power of the Reid Estate system! Let the wheels of government grind away your financial worries!
Real Life Example No. 3: But even the first two examples are nothing compared to the experience of one Harvey Whittemore, a simple lobbyist and long-time practitioner of the Reid Estate system. Whittemore inadvertently got a great deal on a 42,832-acre property once intended as a missile test range. The land was a development nightmare, because it was infested with the endangered Desert Tortoise and the entire road frontage along U.S. 93 was blocked by a mile-wide power line corridor leased to the federal government. Either one of these problems alone might take an act of Congress to solve. But Harvey Whittemore had that in mind all along! Whittemore understood the importance of “Step 2” of the system: “Hire a Reid, invest with a Reid, contribute to a Reid, but above all know a Reid!”—and he had all the bases covered.
"You have to understand how close the Whittemore and Reid families are," Whittemore told the Los Angeles Times. "My relationship with Sen. Reid goes back decades." In addition, Whittemore’s personal attorney is Leif Reid, the senator’s son. Rory Reid, another of the senator’s sons and head of the Nevada Democrat Party during the Clark County Commission’s decision to rezone his father’s property, was made a partner in Whittemore’s law firm. In fact, all four of Reid’s sons (Rory, Leif, Josh and Key) have worked for the firm during their careers. Whittemore has given tens of thousands of dollars to Harry Reid’s campaigns, thousands to Rory Reid’s successful campaign to be elected to the Clark County Commission, and thousands to Josh Reid’s unsuccessful bid to be elected to the city council of Cottonwood Heights, Utah.
Although neither Sen. Reid nor Leif Reid intervened on his behalf, according to Sen. Reid, the Bureau of Land Management gave Whittemore clear title to 10,000-acre rent-free lease constituting the Desert Tortoise Preserve in the middle of the site, in exchange for 10,000 acres on the eastern edge of the 5-mile by 13-mile tract. Local officials of the Interior Department objected to this minor “boundary adjustment” of the preserve, but were overruled by Washington. The Desert Tortoises, it turns out, were willing to move to the Mormon Mountains.
The federal power corridor was a bigger problem. But after Sen. Reid inserted a measure into a federal land bill opening up the property across the highway for the corridor, then repeatedly inserted a provision into bills to move the corridor across the highway, that pesky 15-square-mile corridor just disappeared. At first, this was to be a gift from the government to Mr. Whittemore, but after a minor stink was raised, Whittemore offered to pay $160,000 for the 15-square-mile improvement. Eventually, he was forced to pay the $10.4 million that government appraisers said the change was actually worth.
But that was still a bargain, since together the federal changes to the corridor and the Desert (and Mountain) Tortoise habitat freed up more than 20,000 acres of highway-accessible Reid Estate for a development that will eventually include 159,000 homes, 16 golf courses (several by Jack Nicklaus), and all the associated strip malls this new city will require. I suggest they call it “Tortuga Hills.”
But there was one last obstacle to clear. The EPA suddenly decided that bulldozing desert streambeds, as proposed, might be bad for the streambed environment. A flurry of calls from Sen. Reid arranged meetings between the EPA, Whittemore and Leif Reid. Nevada’s junior senator, Republican John Ensign, was enlisted in the cause, clearing the way for the senior senator, Harry Reid, to also become more directly involved in talking to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. Can you guess what the outcome was? That’s right—the system worked. The Harry Reid Real Estate Investment System, that is. The project proceeded with minimal changes.
There are other examples, as well. But you can see how this simple investment system, accessible by every citizen (no mater how unconnected), works to create millions and millions of dollars of new government-unleashed wealth for its practitioners
How successful is the system for its inventor, Sen. Harry Reid? So successful he doesn’t even remember how much land he owns anymore! He’s constantly “remembering” old parcels just before the ethics committee asks about them. Such oversight is often the result of “clerical errors”—just like Sen. Reid accidentally paying personal obligations with campaign funds was the result of “clerical errors.” “Clerical errors” are soon to be added as “Step 4” of the system: “What to claim upon getting caught using the system.”
In fact, the system is so successful that Harry Reid, that beacon of morality from Searchlight, Nev., can now stop worrying about money altogether, and concentrate on his true calling: fighting the “culture of corruption” in Republican Washington.
Get with the system! It works for Harry, Harry’s friends, Harry’s sons, and even Harry’s son-in-law—but that’s a whole other (998 acre) story. The system can work for you, too.
Hey we need to talk. You know some Reid land stuff. I know a lot. There are others.
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