In the part of Oregon where I am, the "idiots" did not stop the logging. Stopping logging was imposed on them by outside forces. First, the Federal Government took over a lot of railroad land. Second, outside environmentalists wanted to save the spotted owl. Now any tree more than two years old is "sacred".
When the Feds took over the railroad land, the property taxes from that land went away. We were doing just fine until then, thank you.
Now many Federal facilities make payments "in lieu of taxes". Army bases that send soldier's kids to the local schools and such, and the payments were originally intended to replace the property taxes lost to Federalization of the land. Well, now the Feds still own the land, and have locked it up so it can not be used, but do not want to make the payments to replace the property taxes they took off the books.
The best plan I have heard yet is for the counties to hire loggers to cut & sell the timber on the Federal land. If the counties do it, we can give the loggers sovereign immunity.
This would make for a wonderful donnybrook in the court system.
The bottom line is that liberal environmentalists are trying to essentially starve the conservative rural dwellers off of the land and into cities.
Look into the background before you start calling us rural conservatives "idiots".
Well said, Dave. Though I lived in OR 15 years I couldn’t remember the details on the railroad land. Our property abutted BLM and I believe that BLM land was some of that old railroad land.
Do you know if when the feds got that land it all became BLM?