The Politics of Fire [Western democRATs Never Heard of Sierra Club]

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Friday. August 23, 2002

[TroutStalker]

President Bush took a break from cleaning up cedar trees on his Texas ranch yesterday to visit fire-wracked Oregon and announce a new plan to clean up forests everywhere else. You know that environmental politics have turned upside down when a Republican President can send the Sierra Club heading for the tall timber.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

...First there was Chainsaw Tom Daschle's midnight rider to exempt his home state of South Dakota from environmental laws...

LOL!

[BOBTHENAILER]

This year's fires have filled the West with smoke and enormous damage, but they've certainly cleared the political air. Mr. Bush and Republicans should keep driving this issue, so voters in November understand precisely who's responsible for burning up the wilderness.

Here it is ladies and gents, HUGE WEDGE issue to drive out several RATS from the basements of government. Hit this one hard. Ping all over and email your friends.

LET'S HOLD THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE

[TroutStalker]

You sure don't hear about that in any of the "mainstream" media, do you?

[TroutStalker]

Thanks for your ping list, Bob.

[lizma]

"My attitude is, if it's good enough for that part of South Dakota, it's good enough for Oregon." George W. Bush


LOL! Gotta love it. Almost as good as the missile, tent, camel crack!

[chambley1]

And lest we forget the myriad of Clinton loving liberal green bureaucrats in the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Park Service etc. That's a big part of the problem also. These folks have their heads up their a** and now we are paying the price!

[TroutStalker]

Ping.

[BOBTHENAILER]

Thanks for your ping list, Bob.

My pleasure. Thanks for posting this HUGE thorn in the RAT/ECO side. This thorn is gonna fester and poison their system. Baucus(Montana), Johnson/Daschle (SD), Wellstone (Minnesota) and many other RAT candidates are gonna have to answer some HARD questions, especially when we get the word out on Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, et al contributions which put them in the BURN camp.

[Carry_Okie]

Government thinning projects concern me nearly as much as government preservation did. It's a far more complex business than they realize over the long run. Restoring overgrown meadows is a really difficult thing to attempt.

[BOBTHENAILER]

That's the same forest where the Wilderness Society appealed a plan to clean up thousands of acres of trees that blew down in 1997, and caused a subsequent beetle infestation. The group's report on Routt said that "Fire Concerns Don't Warrant Logging," and advised "Leave it alone." Denver voters now choking on smoke no doubt appreciate that.

This article is loaded with kindling to burn the RATS from the garbage infested alleys they occupy, from which they are nibling away at our way of life. A BIG BTTT for this article.

[r9etb]

Ron Wyden wrote this? U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)?

Talking mean about "Chainsaw Tom Daschle?"

Hmmmm.....

[Free State Four]

Mr. Daschle's election-summer conversion left his party naked to charges of hypocrisy,

I never, ever, under any circumstances want to see any DemocRAT naked.

That said, great editorial. Thanks for posting it. W has the greenies on the defensive!!!! Whee-hawwww! fsf

[TroutStalker]

Managing ecological succession is certainly no simple matter, especially when there have been decades of various policies applied. What we do need is an honest evaluation and debate about what specific policies need to be applied where and when.

The forest policy of the last several decades has been dominated by the far left and their anti-business agenda. It is these groups that need to be exposed as the frauds that they are and marginalized in the debate.

[BOBTHENAILER]

Government thinning projects concern me nearly as much as government preservation did

Fair enough. My point is: the more RAT defeats we accomplish because of their slavish devotion to ECO-MONEY, the better the chances of having private industry take care of the problems government can't fix.

One step at a time.

[TroutStalker]

This was written by the editorial staff of the WSJ, not Wyden. He is merely mentioned in the article.

[Free State Four]

Ron Wyden wrote this? U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)?

WSJ editorial staff wrote the editorial. They just put Wyden's picture up because his hypocrital self is mentioned in the piece. Isn't it wonderful to see the Dem's on the run? :o) fsf

[bray]

The legal eco-terrorists are at it again. Not only do they destroy the forests by fighting timber sales throughout the west in front of sympathetic courts but also now they are putting the final nails into the fragile forest and salmon habitat. The so-called friends of the forest have handcuffed the reclamation efforts of Montana that these once scorched forests will take generations if they ever recover. This is strictly by the work of the Sierra Club and other eco-terrorists.

Two years ago the treasured forests of Montana were on fire and over a million acres or 1,500 square miles were burned thanks to poor forest management, a draught and a series of lighting storms. The tinderbox forests went up with a vengeance and burned the pristine virgin and second growth timber into a blackened wasteland. As most level headed timber people know, the current forest fires are so intense that they burn the ground white hot and sterilize that soil up to 18 inches into the ground. This means that nothing will grow in that ground for decades or centuries as opposed to the ancient cleansing fires. The old forests would naturally burn every few years and clear out the fallen branches and undergrowth, but not anymore. The forest clutter accumulates thanks to the lockout by the courts for proper management of the forests. This leads to far more intense fires and increases the possibility of the fast spreading crown fires.

After the Montana fires the forest products industry wanted to go in and harvest the billions of dollars worth of timber and reclaimate the lands. This would have furnished jobs for the communities of Montana and improved the habitats of the forest creatures and endangered salmon spawning streams.

The legal eco-terrorists quickly moved in and stopped all forest sales and required multiple environmental impact studies. This not only stifled all clean up and harvesting of the dead and dying trees but halted all reclamation projects in these forestlands. The trees have since become unmarketable and the billions of dollars worth of timber have become nearly worthless bug factories. That apparently was not enough for the terrorists; they have stopped any replanting or forest improvements or erosion control. The Congress spent $8 million for reclamation the forests and prepare it for sale. Most of that money was wasted on impact studies to satisfy the ecos, eliminating all Federal salvage efforts.

Talking to a forest person in the Missoula area, he described the boondoggle that the ecologists call reforestation. Now they have teams of people walking around these burned forests and shooting trees with paint guns. Hopefully, this does not hurt the poor dead trees. Behind the paint gun shooters is a team of .22 shooters. These guys find the trees with paint markings and shoot the pinecones out of the trees. They of course do not collect these cones like the pinecone harvesters and then send them to the tree nurseries to grow and then plant into healthy trees. No, that would require too much common sense. The legal eco-terrorists have forced the Forest Service wimps to just let those cones drop on the rock hard ground and lay there waiting for a chipmunk to open it or open on its own, hopefully in a century or so.

There are two major problems with the paintball selection and .22 caliber method. First, as stated before the blast furnace temperatures of the fires leaving the ground about as fertile as a parking lot. Second, there are no animals in that sterile environment left to open the cones and scatter their seeds. And what do these cone hunters get for their valiant effort to waste the forests and taxpayers time? They are paid a measly $18/hr to spend a day in the forest shooting pinecones.

When did the Forest Service and Govt become so fearful of the Sierra Clubbers and their fellow eco-mafia? Are they so afraid of having their buildings burned down that they will be forced to make useless symbolic gestures at forest management that they will not actually manage those forests? Or are they afraid of the PC Gestapo to the level of fearing that not savings a dead tree is equivalent of killing a whale? The fact that these eco-gangsters can stop any actions in the nations forests no matter how positive proves how powerful and threatening they have become.

When will we take back our national treasures and manage them in an efficient and healthy manner? The destruction of the Montana forests two years ago by mismanagement of these forests was bad enough. It does not compare to the continuation of a forest desert that is being maintained in the name of ecotopia. Oregon’s once beautiful forests are burning from the same malpractice and we will be heading down the same destructive forest path that continues to blacken Montana!

Pray for GW and the Truth

[Carry_Okie]

It is these groups that need to be exposed as the frauds that they are and marginalized in the debate.

What we are seeing in the nation's forests is inherent to public ownership of land. What we need is an alternative to civic control, a management system capable of gradually privatizing land use control in a responisble fashion.

So, I invented one.

[r9etb]

Ah, my mistake.

I must say, I really like the way Bush has turned the tables on Li'l Tommy with this one. The D's have got to hate the fact that Bush plays politics better than they do.