Posted on 06/11/2002 2:10:52 PM PDT by vannrox
Residents of John Day, Oregon are a self-reliant lot. Hard winters and a depressed economy have forged hardscrabble attitudes toward outsiders and "the government."
Grant County voters passed two ballot measures last month reflecting the frustration of residents who feel they no longer control their lives, livelihoods or the land.
By about a 2-to-1 margin, residents approved a measure banning the United Nations in the county and another allowing people to cut trees on federal land, regardless of whether the U.S. Forest Service approves.
"We intend to push the limit, push the envelope on this," said Dave Traylor, a stocky, bearded jack-of-all-trades who helped write the measures.
Home to about 7,500 people, Grant County is a place where cowboy hats, hay farms and horse trailers are ubiquitous, where the high school teams are the "Prospectors," and the two radio stations play Christian or country music.
The county covers an area about the size of Connecticut. More than 60 percent of the land is managed by the federal government. The jobless rate, 13.5 percent, is the second-highest in Oregon.
Many people have seen their logging livelihoods dribble away.
Backers of the two ballot measures blame federal timber policies and environmental restrictions that they say are keeping them off public lands that had given them jobs as loggers, mill workers and ranchers.
Supporters hope to push the Forest Service into allowing more logging. They say millions of board feet of timber could be salvaged by allowing people to cut the big ponderosa pines and firs that are hazards.
"If we could just address salvage on the dead, dying and blowdown, we could provide a lot of trees to the mills," said Traylor.
Dennis Reynolds, who as Grant County judge serves as its chief administrator, said the county government likely will endorse a plan to allow residents to cut dead, dying and wind-damaged trees on federal land.
"The question now is, what is the federal government going to do?" he said. "These people are lashing out in the only way they can. Now we have people willing to go to jail over this issue."
Roger Williams, deputy supervisor of the Malheur National Forest, which manages more than 1 million acres of forested land in the county, hopes to avoid conflict.
"We're looking into what we can do to relieve some of the pressure that led these people to put this measure on the ballot," said Williams.
It is the latest conflict to arise in the West with federal authorities.
In San Bernardino County, California, ranchers chafing at cattle grazing restrictions imposed to protect the threatened desert tortoise were supported recently by Sheriff Gary Penrod, who canceled an agreement that gave Bureau of Land Management officers authority to enforce state laws on federal land.
In the Klamath Basin, on the Oregon-California line, farmers and others last year had tense confrontations with the Bureau of Reclamation over its decision to give irrigation water to endangered fish rather than farmers.
Also last year, residents in northeast Nevada defied the Forest Service by attempting to rebuild a washed-out stretch of road in Elko County, work the Forest Service said would threaten the bull trout. The confrontation lasted months.
The second measure that passed in Grant County says the United Nations wants to take away people's guns, seize private property, control the education of children and establish "one world religion-Pantheism (and) world taxation."
Stacie Holmstrom, 35, a lifelong John Day resident, said the measure is too radical.
"I thought that was a real extreme idea," she said. "Grant County sometimes has that stigma anyway -- that we're 'out there' -- and this is just going to add to that."
But others in the county say they believe the allegations made by the measure. Road signs proclaiming Grant County a "UN-free zone" are going up.
"The U.N. scares me. If anything ever got bad, we could have foreigners here controlling us," said John Day painter and muralist Patricia Ross, 55.
Voters in La Terkin, Utah, next year will see a similar anti-U.N. measure on the ballot. An anti-U.N. ordinance was approved in July but repealed by a new Town Council. Organizers are hoping to revive the measure on the 2003 ballot.
William Luers, a former U.S. ambassador and now president of the United Nations Association of the USA, said the anti-U.N. sentiment is absurd.
"The United Nations absolutely has no capacity, resources or forces to take over anything in the world," Luers said.
Bud Trowbridge, whose grandfather settled in John Day in 1862, said he's ready to use force to protect his property from the United Nations.
"We're trying to avoid a fight. But we still got our guns," he said.
< /Rant Off>
The second measure that passed in Grant County says the United Nations wants to take away people's guns, seize private property, control the education of children and establish "one world religion-Pantheism (and) world taxation."
We don't need any laws passed in the U.S. to limit U.N. power here. The U.S. Constitution already says the U.N. has no power.
To add redundant laws to what is already covered in the Constitution accomplishes nothing and instead only delegitimizes the Constitution.
(Stacie Holmstrom needs to be taken in for exploratory surgery to determine if there are any living cells between her ears)
That should be true, however the Federal Government is not authorised to own land outside of D.C. except for post offices, postal roads, and various military installations. The Federal Government owns over 80% of Nevada, over 50% of Arizona, and large portions of many other western states. The "Endangered Species Act" which is a UN treaty, ratified by the Senate is being used by the greens to force people off federal land, and in some instances private property adjacent to federal land is being taken by the government to comply with law suits filed by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Nature Conservancy, or other green groups.
The economy of towns, countys, and even large portions of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and New Mexico have been destroyed by the U.N. Endangered Species Act.
The Federal Government won't abide by the Constitution, people have to fight back in any way they can, all they are left with is city, and county ordinances, and state laws.
Those on the East Coast have not seen much of this yet, it has been going on out west for years.
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
Yellowstone National Park
Everglades National Park, Florida
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Independence Hall, Pennsylvania
Redwood National Park, California
Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky
Olympic National Park
Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Illinois
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina/Tennessee
San Juan National Historic Site and La Fortaleza, Puerto Rico
The Statue of Liberty, New York
Yosemite National Park, California
Monticello, and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Chaco Culture National Historic Park, New Mexico
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, including Mauna Loa, Hawaii
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
I like that spirit of defiance. All I would caution, though, is that these folks need to make sure they keep their heads on straight, despite all the temptations and provocations they may be subjected to in order to get them to do something stupid. Right now, their biggest obstacle isn't the raw power of the feds; it's the stereotype they face throughout most of the country as being backwater, uneducated, and paranoid. The best way to counter that is to do everything they can to argue dispassionately and intelligently at every opportunity. Godspeed to them.
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