Posted on 09/01/2002 11:51:41 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
In the last essay, titled "Paul Bunyan Meets Sierra Sue Happy and the Democrats," we learned that Paul Bunyan, as well as many other American folk heroes, were being deconstructed and then reconstructed into politically correct social icons by leftist groups like the Sierra Club aka Sierra Sue Happy.
We found out that the Democratic Party has become the legislative arm of the radicalized environmental movement.
We learned that 6 million acres of Western forests have burned to the ground, some of it to bedrock. This will ensure that some of those forests may take generations to grow back. That is IF they EVER grow back without human intervention through replanting.
We also know it has cost at least $1.5 billion to fight or contain the fires this year. Never mind the other attendant monetary, emotional and environmental costs.
We learned that in the wildfires of the past 12 years or so, people have lost their homes, firefighters have died, critter habitat has been destroyed, and through it all groups like the Sierra Club think catastrophic wildfires are good things.
Also we find that the GAO recently reissued figures which showed that from 49 percent and up to 89 percent of approved federal logging or salvage has been stopped by green groups as they institute court cases against the government. Sierra Club being one of the most litigious groups. They have their own lawyers to keep fed and housed, what else would they be used for?
Up until a few weeks ago, Sierra Club websites were glorifying the wonders of catastrophic fires in the name of forest health. No matter that some of these fires are high intensity causing creeks to boil, species of fish to die off, mercury to be released into the watershed, erosion, INCALCULABLE riparian damage, loss of private and public lands for future recreational or aesthetic opportunities. But to Sierra Sue Happy and her lesser green cousins, natural is better even if "natural" means a virtual desert is created.
The grand dame of the environmental movement, the Sierra Club, is not the only leftist group that has taken on the task of collectivizing America by using an issue such as the environment, as a primary tool to deconstruct Western civilization and capitalism.
It is not the only group that litigates against sound forest management practices or "ecosystem" health. By the way, BPC(Before Political Correctness) we used to call ecosystems by their real names. That is – nature, the backcountry, pastures, mountains, creeks and streams or the northwoods.
The Sierra Club, however, is not the only group litigating to prevent timber sales for profit through salvage, thinning, cutting, and clearing woodie refuse. In our times, the profit motive which might allow loggers to cut or clear woods and make a buck doing it, is a mortal environmental sin.
Environmental groups hate profit except when it is profit coming their way. Invariably, environmental groups are using logging for profit as a perjorative akin to murdering a baby in its cradle. In public schools around the country logging and loggers are made to appear evil or BAD. Children write papers on the subject telling loggers to stop being so mean to the forests and go get other jobs. I know I have seen the essays and this is going on nation wide.
If they ever do agree to allow cutting and thinning they would prefer to PAY someone to do it rather then allow loggers to pay US to log federal forests which are badly managed and overcrowded in the extreme. That is not usually the fault of the Forest Service. Nope. Sierra Sue Happy is a demanding and sue happy mistress. She hates thinning pr cutting or hauling using mechanical means. Sierra Sue has even protested against using horses to haul logs from federal forests lest some Percheron crunch a decaying log and kill a termite. Some of her cohorts in the green movement don't even want helicopters lifting logs out. I suppose because it might stir an unnatural movement of air.
It is an ethical thing with Sierra Sue. She does not care for capitalism and considers it an environment destroying evil. That is unless you are an adverstiser in her glossy pricey magazines.
Even though capitalism provides her with funds and income through contributions, grants and taxes, that seems to cut no ice with Sierra Sue and friends. No social justice maven is Sierra Sue. She hates the profit motive and capitalism even when they give jobs to rural poor – good paying jobs.
Sierra always talks about the jobs that will result from not cutting trees. Tourism for instance. She prefers that high paying jobs in logging be replaced with those cleaning refuse in hotels or picking up yuppie detritus on hiking trails, or pumping gas for SUV driving soccer moms who come out to the woods twice a year to hug a tree. She prefers loggers take jobs driving a tour bus through limited access public parks at minimum wage.
She hates capitalism and the profit motive. That is EXCEPT when it comes to her well stuffed pocket book, her plush digs in San Francisco and Washington, DC. All of her good living and lifestyle courtesy of trial lawyers, her friends in congress, not to mention the federal courts.
Through a Green Glass Darkly
In the last essay, we learned that America's public schools are being used by groups like the Sierra Club to spread the green message. (A Luddite collectivist and culturally Marxist agenda and message.)
The Sierra Club is having a writing contest in which American school children are being asked to help Paul Bunyan recant his tree cutting ways. Paul will join the Sierra Club and will refuse to cut any trees at all. A folk hero deconstructed into a modern day politically correct nudge.
In light of this, and because the Sierra Club now litigates away any kind of common sense forest or environmental policy, we have renamed John Muir's creation – Sierra Sue Happy.
Sierra Sue Happy represents a kind of modern day folk anti-hero. Our society and government supports her using federal tax dollars and tax exemptions and grants. She gets a lot from suing. By no means does all of her money come from $10 contributions from armchair environmentalists in Connecticut and New Jersey.
Sierra Sue Happy is a 501(c)3 tax entity. That means she does not pay taxes on the millions upon millions of dollars she collects in contributions as well as government and foundation grants.
The 501 tax status also means Sierra Sue Happy and her cousins Willie Wildlife Fund, Newt Nature Conservancy, not to mention favorite companion Audie Audubon, are supposed to confine their deconstructing agenda and monetary contributions to green issues. They are not supposed to be promoting political candidates. The record shows that Sierra Sue and groups like her, have wandered far from fuddy-duddy old IRS rules for charitable or "educational" organizations supporting politicians.
The record also shows that most of our new folk heroes like Sierra Sue Happy and Willie Wildlife Fund give aid and comfort to leftist democrats. These include their favorite fuzzy wuzzy green politicos, Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and Maria Cantwell, D-Washal. Also acceptable to Sierra Sue Happy are South Dakota's Tim Johnson and Tom Daschle. In other words find any leftist/progressive/democrat running for office this election year, and Sierra Sue Happy is probably running ads suggesting that these fuzzy green political sympathizers are accommodating their green wish list – which they choose to call "issues."
Sierra Sue and friends plan to spend at least $2 million on behalf of House and Senate candidates in Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, Georgia, New Hampshire, Maine, South Dakota, and Iowa. Their political director, Margaret Conway states that the best hope for defending the environment lies with the U.S. House and the Senate." By that of course she means electing more democrats or dimwitted RINOs to office.
It should come as no surprise that several years ago The Wall Street Journal reported that in 1996 the Sierra Club used a 527 "Stealth PAC" to finance its issue ads on the environment. "We just use this as another tool," said Daniel Weiss, Sierra's political director at the time.
That is especially true if that leftist Democrat is running against a person who might actually believe in limited government or the Constitution. Particularly if that someone has discovered that the modern environmental movement does not always KNOW what is best for the environment. As it happens, that may or may NOT mean a Republican. That is because most Republicans are scared spitless of Sierra Sue's alter ego the mainstream media.
With a few exceptions, most Republicans don't want to appear to insult Sierra Sue lest they be branded as being for dirty air and dirtier water and the total destruction of every tree and critter on planet earth. Worst of all if a brave politician attempts to educate people about the leftist agenda behind the environmental movement they are branded as "mean-spirited" and Sierra Sue Happy renews her efforts to make sure they don't return to congress.
In a fit of self righteous pique, Sierra Sue Happy will stand with her hands on her hips and point to issue ads which compliment RINO Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine, or Chris Shays of Connecticut.
Turning on her expensive hiking booted heel and dropping her glossy magazine made from wood products, while tossing her ads for pricey Patagonia gear and eco-tourism to the Galapagos on the ground, Sierra Sue insists that she is merely educating the public. She won't tell you that by and large her issue ads on TV and radio and in print, support any leftist willing to go along with Sierra's collectivist agenda.
A reasonable person, however, has to give credit to Sierra Sue and Willie Wildlife Fund. They and their folk hero leftist cousins have been among the greatest builders of myth and legend in modern times.
Sierra Sue and her buds are strictly from the Frankfurt School of Social Theory. They found ways to use the media and ad campaigns to sell a new leftist vision and the myth that goes with it. The myth of a one size fits all policy on absolutely everything from the environment to education. Collectivism has come of age. It found THE issue to build utopia, the utopian man and society, and that issue was the environment.
Building Sierra Sue's Theme Park
At the 1992 RIO Conference and the upcoming Earth Summit, as well as collectivist covenants like the U.N. Treaty on Biodiversity, and U.N. Agenda 21, Desertification Treaty, and the sacred holy cow they call "sustainable development," our modern green folk heroes have found the way, the truth and the light. You will learn to your chagrin that it is their way or no way. They do not play well with others nor do they compromise on "issues." Their end game is to collectivize the world and get capitalists to pay for it.
If the Soviet communists couldn't conquer the entire world, if Sweden and Euro-socialist regimes are sinking into over-taxed decadence and decay, America's green collectivists seeks to show them and us how collectivizing should be done. They have been eminently successful in that regard.
Sierra Sue and company have out done any televangelist in collecting money and in influence peddling, changing vocabulary and thus changing the direction of the debate. They are past masters at demonization. They have found the way to demonize and marginalize opposition to the holy doctrines of Sierra Sue and company and they do it tax free.
The Christian Coalition lost its 501(c)3 status for supporting political candidates through passing out candidates' voting records on issues. Sierra Sue Happy certainly does the same kind of thing and has more money with which to do it.
Nonetheless, at least the Christian Coalition didn't take federal grants to promote its agenda. Sierra Sue and a dozen lesser green entities do just that.
But Sierra Sue's legendary untouchable status as a modern third rail folk hero keeps the IRS off her back. Just as the IRS stays away from folk hero and media darling the untouchable Reverend Jesse Jackson. Both of the legends survive and are beyond the law because they ARE mainstream media darlings. The media foams at the mouth protecting them from criticism and continues to do so. But so do their powerful democrat flunkies like Tom Daschle.
Talk about a failure of ethics? Sierra Sue sniffs and throws her blond curled head and says, "So what, I am special and so is my cause." In other words the ends justifies the means.
She will continue to be unethical. She will continue to sue to make a living suing the government and blackmailing business. For most of us, it would be highly unethical to take grants from the very agencies of government that we sue every chance we get. It would be extreme to play the virgin green queen when we take big bucks from Exxon or Enron.
Like Jesse Jackson, Sierra Sue Happy and Willie Wildlife and their friends, continue to intimidate by threatening lawsuits or media exposure when they are not given "contributions" to promote their latest myth. Name-calling is a primary tool in this effort. You can be forgiven if you are an axe murderer or suicide bomber, but God help you if you are labeled as anti-environment. This bunch are herders of multiple green sacred cows.
Sierra Sue can pay for her democratic friends because she has the bucks. She will be running "positive" television ads, shaped to local concerns and full of local images, and will lay out the records of Rep. Bill Luther, D-Minn, Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn.
Negative ads will tell voters to keep an eagle eye on nefarious conservatives like Republican Sens. Wayne Allard of Colorado and Gordon Smith of Oregon; Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Saxby Chambliss, South Dakota Senate candidate Rep. John Thune, and Iowa Reps. Greg Ganske and Tom Latham, Republicans running for Senate and for re-election, respectively. Only a religious or quasi-religious group could have that much clout, money and power and that is what Sierra Sue represents – secular religion.
One also has to ask, if Sierra Sue Happy and the rest of America' green folk heroes are not part of a religious movement, then why are these groups being included for more grants in the "Faith Initiatives" bill rolling through congress?
Perhaps we tax paying heathens should just join hands and say AMEN brother! Pass the collection plate – sock it to us and then sock it to us again!
Forget that for a moment. Conservative groups run ads which point to conservatives who support an agenda and issues dear to conservatives. There are other things Sierra Sue and her cousins, the American version of the Red Guard, are doing which are far more serious.
Paul Bunyan worked for a living. Sierra Sue Happy tells us what he did was BAD. Meanwhile, she and dozens like her, deconstruct American icons and institutions.
America's schools are responding and helping this leftward drift and the accompanying deconstruction of real heroes. The following comes from a school website in Pennsylvania, "You are a representative from the Sierra Club, a group that is trying to protect the environment. Write a letter to Paul that will try to convince him to stop cutting down all the trees in the wilderness. What ideas will help him be convinced that cutting is bad for the country? Make this a business letter at least a page in length."
Protecting the environment? Sierra Sue Happy? I don't think so. But since the Sierra Sue is the secular version of orthodoxy, like the Southern Baptists for instance, she and her information and motives are beyond being questioned by the government school system.
Sierra Sue and company have arrived. They sit in judgement on an American version of Mount Olympus. They have made themselves arbiters of national security matters as well.
Paul Bunyan was a legend. However, at least he never pretended to be God Almighty OR the supreme director of national public policy or the national security needs of the United States.
Who Needs Saddam or Suicide Bombers? We Have Sierra Sue and Willie Wildlife
Recently, journalist Michelle Malkin did a series of excellent articles on how goofball enviro policy holds our military hostage to the green dream. She states: "As I wrote on Tuesday, the House this week rejected a request by our armed forces to allow the Navy to conduct training exercises at sea without the constant threat of marine mammal "harassment" lawsuits. The military also faces opposition to a broader request to exempt some military training grounds from the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treat Act, which currently contains no exemption for national security."
In other words, our soldiers "must tiptoe around the habitats of desert tortoieses, and not step on plants which may or may not actually be endangered, refrain from " nighttime exercises, beach exercises, amphibious landings, and live-fire training exercises-lest they be sued by the nearest anti-military environmental group."
Keeping us hostage to corrupt Middle East oil fiefdoms, Sierra Sue was ever so proud when the bill to allow drilling in the mosquito infested bog area of the ANWR was defeated.
Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club stated, "The public said they want the Arctic Refuge protected for future generations, and their Senators heard them loud and clear." The public he is talking about must be planning to buy electric cars in the near future. This time several American unions complained about Sierra Sue's foolishness in putting the strong arm on Tom Daschle, the Dems and RINOs to prevent drilling in ANWR.
Pope thanked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., for his leadership on the issue, as well as Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Harry Reid, D-Nev.
When the irresponsible congress, especially the democrats and their RINO friends, watch as our military are brought home in body bags, will they connect any of it to inadequate training or military practice? Would they have the brains to associate their failure to reform or adopt common sense regulations as one of the causes? Do they give a damn that we are still in hock for oil needs to the likes of Saddam Hussein? I doubt it.
President Bush Deconstructs Green Destruction
Recently, President Bush went to Oregon and declared a new forest management policy. As he stood in the charred ruins of the worst fire in Oregon history (Over 400,000 acres) he tells the world that the hands off, "let it burn because it is natural" that created the blackened landscape, is flat dumb.
On a pile of debris which was still burning with dead and blackened trees, Bush said: "This is the second fire site I've been to this summer, and it's the same story. Had we properly managed our forests, the devastation caused would not have been nearly as severe, and it's a crying shame. ... What the critics need to do is come stand where I stand."
What the new policy will do, if the Democrats and RINOs don't prevent it, wil streamline review of the environmental effects of proposed logging and brush clearing.
Standards by which those proposals are approved will be changed.
Government agencies will be allowed to negotiate contracts giving companies the right to sell the wood products they harvest in exchange for removing them from the forest. (Profit motive and the screaming from Sierra Sue has started already.)
Make it harder for "environmental" groups to appeal plans for tree thinning and brush clearing.
In his speech, Bush also asked Congress to pass legislation to reduce frivolous lawsuits. Meanwhile, trial lawyers keep sending money to the democrats so unless democrats are defeated in significant numbers it will be Sierra Sue Happy writ large for ALL leftist causes. (Next up will be reparations for blacks and fast food lawsuits).
The myths Sierra Sue has created are predictable, intractable, uncompromising, and usually based on half-truths undergirding a collectivist agenda. Her suitors, the trial lawyers and Democrats will continue to pay for her agenda and enhance her myth.
Because American environmental policy is in the bad hands of zealots, federal politicians, and green bureaucrats, is it any wonder Americans continue to get corruption like the Canadian Lynx debacle, the phony spotted owl controversy, forests and lands that are mismanaged, and groups like the infamous case of the Klamath farmers put out of business by a fish that is not endangered. A fish that is being clubbed to death at one end of the state while greens and bureaucrats are destroying communities in the name of that fish on the other end of the state. Go Figure.
Meanwhile, the "good science" amendment to the Endangered Species Act is stalled. RINO John Warner and fuzzy wuzzy green maven Maria Cantwell have joined forces to enshrine Clinton's "roadless" initiative into permanent federal law. That will really help when MORE forests burn uncontrollably and it is doubly difficult to get into those areas. America burns and the lives and habitat of animals, fish and fowl, not to mention human beings are snuffed out thanks to idiotic legislation like the Clinton "roadless" initiative.
Draining Sierra Sue Happy's Swamp
Wildfires live or die in the land, fuel and weather that surround them. When there is no fuel there is no fire. We have to stop fueling Sierra Sue's fire. We have to drain her swamp.
We can't prevent individuals from contributing to her or groups like her. We can, however, insist that government does not give the Sierra Club, various wildlife groups, smaller front groups for radical animal rights or earth worshippers, the funds to litigate. Money is the fuel for these groups. Money and budgets and wars over influence have led to the failed forest policies and the catastrophic fire disasters of the last few years. Money and power and a type of unethical special privilege brought us the Canadian Lynx debacle and the stupidity of a non-endangered fish costing the Klamath farmers millions of dollars, not to mention their way of life.
Funding Sierra Sue Happy, Audie Audubon or Newt Wildlife Fund using taxpayer funds through grants is unethical and wrong. Their judgment on environmental matters has proved to be selective and geared to making the most money for themselves while taking on easy targets.
Go do a search and find out the last time Sierra Sue and her phalanx of lawyers went after a major polluter like the City of Portland, Oregon for instance. Or when have they sued the polluters of the Potomac River?
Never never forget Sierra Sue worked out a deal with Tom Daschle to exempt South Dakota's Black Hills from federal forest policy and lawsuits. Sierra Sue does not bite the sugar daddy that feeds her.
While we are at it, let's drain the sugar daddies' power, money and perks as well. That is a mighty big swamp they have and it may take years to drain it. We should begin in November by voting for conservatives who want a clean environment by using sensible environmental policy to accomplish that end.
PS – I have been a harsh critic of President Bush for not rescinding Clinton's executive orders re the environment. I have hit him for pandering to luddite greens when he as a farmer/rancher ought to know better. But his speech in Oregon about changing forest policy was dead on. I am hoping it was the equivalent to the 9.11 speech he gave on September 20th of last year. If it is I just may have to eat my criticism. In any event, watch congress this year. A bunch of really bad environmental law is about to go down. Some of it supported by RINOs. I am hoping GWB will not be one of them.
The problem's more sinister...we're now witnessing the long-term effects of the far left Hollywood-Disney-NEA "education" of the children. Ferngully, Free Willy, most made for TV movies about the environment, cartoons, comic books share the same themes...evil humans/developers/corporations vs. harmless, innocent nature. About that "McCarthy-ism"...?
I truly admire homeschoolers and pray the movement evolves and grows everyday.
I suggested to him that he write an essay simular to this:
Wake up. Itch, Itch, Itch. Scratch Scratch, Scratch. Bite, Bite Bite. Bite itcher. Eat itcher. Good, Good. Smell Smell Smell. Urinate, Urinate, Urinate. Deficate, Deficate, Deficate. Look, Look , Look. Listen, listen, listen.
I think you get the drift, It might be hard to get two pages of this, but you could put the rat through a day of dodging enemies, fighting other rats, seeing another rat get traped, and later cannabalizing the same (rats are famous for cannabalizing), with the whole idea to dedisneyfy the whole subject.
I will report back if he took my suggestion.
About the homeschoolers....Amen.
``The Internet is a frightful danger to all of us.'' -Walter Cronkite
Heaven forbid that using good management that allows for removal of say 20% of the forest by logging, could prevent 20 or 30 million acres of fire devastation, because someone might profit from logging?????
What does burning millions of acres, which also kills wildlife gain? What does the private ownership of property have to do with the fire threat when we know that private property owners are better stewards in managing their investments than any government has ever demonstrated?
There is in no instance we have been made aware of where the private property owners would ever want their homes to be put at risk, yet our government demonstrates through perverted forest management initiative, that they would rather let the forest burn than protect the true stewards of land, the homeowner. Reckless environmental policy is socialism in disguise. These people want us to live in mud huts and appease the myth of sustainable development, which is also collective socialism. Those who insist no profit should be derived from our Earth resources because it might not benefit everyone equally are socialists. And how can we have tree huggers when idiocy allows the trees to burn?
There is nothing that says people cannot take any risks and still prosper. Living on a flood plain or a coastal plain or tornado alley or a fault line, or a desert, or a big city is a matter of personal choice. Freedom to choose where we live is at issue. The government thinks they can give us freedom to choose where they think we should live, which is not freedom at all. It is socialism, which is blatently against the Bill of Rights. Apparently our government is unwilling to exercize the will of the people by defending our rights, which is the sole reason why a Constitutional Republic form of government was created.
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