Bush opens 300,000 acres of Alaskan national forest to logging

StarTribune.com ^ | Dec. 24 2003 | John Heilprin, Associated Press

[ChadGore]

Woohooo !! Thank you GWB !

[Guillermo]

LOL Music to my ears!

[catpuppy]

A $10,000 or $20,000 royalty check each christmas for each citizen would be a lot better than lining the pockets of logging company executives, or executives of Canadian mining companies that take out our gold.

Not to put too fine a point on it but ... what in the hedoublell are you talking about?

[waterstraat]

Im talking about allowing americas resources to be harvested, allowing our land to be mined, our forests to be logged, but at fair market prices, by american companies, with profit/royalties paid from the resources sold, to be directly returned to each and every american citizen, in the form of a check at the end of each year. A special fund, entirely separate from all other government monies, and distributed each year to US citizens.

I am aganst giving away our trees and gold, etc, to a few select companies at prices far below market levels, soley to profit a few executives of companies which now are allowed to take our resources, and who only pay the particular politicians for the favor of getting our resources for free or nearly for free.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Good move by President Bush!

[Stopislamnow]

Bout time. Now we need to free the oil....

[B Knotts]

'bout time.

The gummint has no bidness owning vast amounts of land anyhow. Most of it should be privatized.

[catpuppy]

... to profit a few executives of companies which now are allowed to take our resources, and who only pay the particular politicians for the favor of getting our resources for free or nearly for free.

Seems serious. Any evidence?

[Let's Roll]

Oh, No! Someone might actually make some money from logging! Bring the smelling salts.

[henderson field]

"Bush the bastard?" Please, Marianne, don't hold back. Tell us what you really think. [This truly is driving her nuts.]

[henderson field]

Did you say we are importing building lumber? Then Clinton accomplished his dream, that of making America agriculturally and horticulturally dependent on lesser nations. What a wonderful part of his legacy. That and the World Trade Center.

[tinacart]

"What would it be with millions of acres?"

Serious fire hazard in the summer?

[henderson field]

Re: "the problem with loggers..." What would help here is actual facts. How much are which loggers paying for what species of trees on goverment land? Then how much are they paying for standing timber of private land? Then we'll all decide if the government is getting ripped of. If it is, the answer is to put some people in the Forest Service who can actually read a logging contract. Yes, they do have contracts for logging. These contracts can specify taking the logs out with horses and cleaning up, or they can specify wearing purple socks and whistling Dixie while you cut the trees. So what are the facts as you see them and where can we verify them?

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!!

[NeonKnight]

Actually, road building is a byproduct of logging...or vis-a-vis. When you cut down trees in a row, yet eventually get something resembling a road.

These roads are eco-insignificant. If unused, 20 years after they're done, you will hardly be able to tell they were ever there.

If a road is built in the middle of nowhere, and nobody ever uses it, is it really there?

More importantly. If a road is built in the middle of nowhere, and it puts food on a families table, is it worth it?

[crz]

Tell you what. You go and sign up to recieve timber bids in the area your in and then you can get the "proper" education on how these bids are let. Timber sales are bid on..and the bids go to the highest bidders. Got it?

[crz]

Its a well known fact for Gods sake. Just ask at the building centers where their building lumber comes from. Number one is Canada, then countries like Russia and the EU come.

[Ispy4u]

There are 129 million acres of forest land in alaska

[crz]

Since when do "I" as a logger become a "special" interest oh great and highly educated one? Do you own and make payments on over $900,000 of specialised machinery? Huh? Do you get your buns up at 5 in the morning and get your buns out to the job and get your machinery going and work till 7 or 8 at night because you got to pay for these machines in 5 years? Well do you?

[ngc6656]

A $10,000 or $20,000 royalty check each christmas for each citizen would be a lot better than lining the pockets of logging company executives, or executives of Canadian mining companies that take out our gold.

If you would do the math, you might see readily why we aren't receiving $10,000 checks from the government each year: at last count, the population of our great land was 290 million people.

290,000,000 times $10,000 = $2,900,000,000,000 ($2.9 trillion dollars)

Why Bill Gates doesn't make that kind of money each year, much less the executives of timber and mining companies in aggregate.