SOS Forests

The Dimmest Bulbs in America

As we stumble into the Voting Season, it behooves us to remind the American People that your vote is important. You get to select the next gaggle of morons who will drive the country off a cliff.

It is an honor as well as a Big Responsibility. No ordinary morons will suffice, but you already know that. The American Electorate has chosen some incredible morons in the past, and they will again if history is any guide.

One especially stellar achievement of our Congress of Morons is the banning of the incandescent light bulb. It’s “lights out” for America, thanks to the head bangers who inhabit our Capitol Building.

Why did they do it? Why did Congress ban light bulbs but not computers, for instance, or televisions, or electric razors? Out of all the myriad electrical appliances in the culture, what is so special about light bulbs?

Nothing really, but they are symbolic. Light bulbs symbolize intelligence, and if there is anything that Congress lacks, it’s that commodity. By banning the light bulb, Congress is telling America: “We are complete morons without a clue, but we’re in charge and can make you huddle in the cold and dark if we feel like it.”

Pundit Caruba takes a swing:

Turning Off the (Incandescent) Light of Liberty

By Alan Caruba, Warning Signs, September 12, 2010 [here]

What if the government banned air conditioning? What if flat-screen televisions were determined to use too much electricity and were ordered phased out of production? What if the use of all plastic grocery bags were banned? What if the incandescent light bulb, one of the greatest inventions of Thomas Edison in the 1870s was banned? Oh wait, it has been banned!

In a nation where the Medicare “reform” requires Americans to purchase health insurance they may not want and may not be able to afford, was rammed through Congress, what can stop the government from dictating just about any choice you have regarding any purchase you make? The answer? Nothing.

Only it would no longer be a Constitutional government, a nation of laws that reflect anything resembling the truth. The ban on incandescent light bulbs turns off the light of liberty throughout America.

Here are some truths to keep in mind. (1) Carbon dioxide (CO2) along with other “greenhouse gas emissions” does not cause global warming. (2) There is no global warming. (3) The Earth has gone through known warming and cooling cycles for millions of years. (4) The Earth is in a cooling cycle.

(5) Beginning January 1, 2012, government rules will make it impossible to purchase a 100-watt incandescent light bulb. After that, in time, all such light bulbs will be phased out leaving Americans with only dim, over-priced, mercury-filled light bulbs. And (6) they will be made overseas, primarily in China.

By 2012, by order of the government, Americans will no longer be able to purchase any incandescent light bulbs. Why? Because Congress banned them, citing the need to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” to reduce global warming that isn’t happening.

It’s the same Congress that had already determined how much water your toilet can use to flush. It’s the same Congress that determined “cafe” rules that determine how many miles per gallon your automobile must achieve. It’s the same government that requires ethanol be added to gasoline, thus reducing the mileage a gallon of adulterated gasoline can produce, while also driving up the cost of gasoline as well as of corn, a food product, used to produce ethanol.

It’s the same Congress that has blessed a Renewable Electricity Standard that requires utilities to use electricity produced by wind and solar power even though both sources also require 24/7 backup by traditional coal-fired, natural gas, or nuclear plants because they cannot be relied up to generate electricity in a predictable fashion or during periods of peak capacity.

It’s the same Congress that initiated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two “government entities” that purchased the sub-prime mortgage loans that banks and mortgage loan firms were required to make to people who clearly could not afford to replay them. The result is the financial crisis that occurred when those “bundled” mortgages turned out to be “toxic”, worthless paper sold to investment firms and banks as assets. … [more]

Yet the redolent Caruba is not telling us anything we don’t already know. Excuse me Alan, but most Americans are quite aware that Congress in general and their own representatives in particular are babbling idiots. Dangerous babbling idiots. Criminally insane babbling idiots. We know that.

But we keep on electing the worst and the dimmest. America seeks out the stuttering nincompoops and most clownish citizens and props them up as our “leaders”. Look at Al Franken for instance — or not, the view is distasteful in the extreme. Or at any of them. The dumbest people in America serve in Congress. Elections here are like reverse IQ tests.

The lights went out in Congress long ago.

Once in awhile some normal citizen, with a normal IQ, will get so excited at the claptrap-icity of Congress that he or she will offer themselves as candidates. It is admirable but also slightly embarrassing. You have to go to these people and tell them thanks but no thanks. You are normal. We only elect the severely brain damaged. You don’t qualify, being of sound mind.

Ban the Bulb. Where did they come up with that? Has there ever been a more deluded group of humans in history than our Congress?

No, there has not been. Our Congress is special. We know it, we like it, and we are going to keep it that way.

Vote Moron. It’s the thing to do.

Spotted Owl Screw Job Redux

The 2010 Draft Revised Revised Revised Revised Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl is now out for your inspection and comments [here].

From: US Fish and Wildlife Disservice

Date: Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Title: Draft Revised Recovery Plan available for Review

Description: The Draft Revised Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl is available for public review and comment and can be downloaded by clicking the link below. This file is large (6.24 MBs) so it may be slow to open. Emailed comments can be sent to: NSORPComments@fws.gov. Written comments should be submitted to: Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Fish and Wildlife Office, 2600 SE 98th Avenue, Ste. 100, Portland, OR 97266. For additional information go to http://www.fws.gov/oregonfwo

The newest edition of this endless bucket of crap, confusion, and destruction is 181 pages long. That’s not much, considering the USFWD has had 20 years to write it. Here’s a partial timeline:

1990 - the spotted owl was listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as threatened.

1994 - The catastrophic failure known as the Northwest Forest Plan is signed by you guessed it, Al Gore. It is to be a substitute for the statutorily mandated recovery plan.

1994 through 2006 - Spotted owl populations crash, old-growth forests are incinerated, rural economies crash, Congress and USFWD sits on their fat asses doing nothing.

2006 - Formation of 12-member multi-agency, multidisciplinary Recovery Team made up of non-experts with extreme political leanings.

2007 - Draft Recovery Plan #1 published. It flops like a fish on the deck.

2008 - Yet another “expert” panel work revises #1, comes up with Draft Recovery Plan #2.

2009 - Obama Admin in the person of Ken “Mr. Tamper” Salazar flushes #2 down the toilet, claiming the Bush Admin “tampered” with it.

Feb 2010 - USFWD begins a new process by gathering more political extremist wackos together. Public shut out, as usual. Climate change is their new mantra.

Sept 1, 2010 - A district court judge orders Salazar to complete a revised recovery plan within nine months or else. The “or else” part is a joke. Everybody has a good laugh.

Sept 8, 2010 - Draft Revised Recovery Plan #3 released for public comment and peer review.

What do you know? They had something or other in the files, waiting for the judge to order them to release it.

The gist of #3 is that after 20 years, the “experts” don’t know how many owls there are, where they live, what they eat, or anything else. Another 30 years of study is required and, oh yes, another $175 million in funding for the USFWD.

Part of that is to pay “bird biologists” to ride around in pickup trucks blasting barred owls with shotguns “like a redneck sport”. Which is already underway. Duck and cover, here comes a “bird biologist” with a loaded shotgun.

Meanwhile 25% of rural Oregon is on food stamps, all the mills are shuttered and most dismantled, the schools and roads are crumbling, the counties are bankrupt, and the people are angry as bees at the gross pusillanimity of the rapacious functionaries working for the USFWD and their radical Marxist buddies.

But what the hey. Here’s another Hoax Plan. They yearn for your comments. Please study it up and send them some. Any comments sent to SOSF will be posted. Thank you for your patience. Have a food stamp while you’re waiting.

Enviro-Extortion Is the New Game

OPINION EDITORIAL
FROM: KAREN BUDD-FALEN
BUDD-FALEN LAW OFFICES, LLC
DATE: SEPTEMBER 7, 2010
RE: GETTING PAID TO GO AWAY - AND THE TAXPAYER AND CONSUMER GET TO PAY AGAIN

It is no surprise that there is a big difference between legal requirements, radical opinion, political power, private extortion… and then there is the rest of the story.

With regard to the payment of attorneys’ fees to radical environmental groups, radical opinion and political power seem to often win and legal requirements are ignored. In fact, political power supporting radical opinions forced payment of at least $4,697,978 in taxpayer dollars to 14 environmental groups in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Political power payments for radical opinions happens 21% of the time when attorneys’ fees are paid.

And then there are the cases where these same radical environmental groups are extorting millions from major corporations and local governments as payment to drop appeals and protests. For example, recently Western Watersheds Project (“WWP”) and Oregon Natural Desert Association (“ONDA”) extorted $22 million from El Paso Corporation to drop their protests of the Ruby Pipeline project. In another case, the Center for Biological Diversity (“CBD”) extorted almost $1 million from Alameda County, California to drop its protests to a City’s approval of a residential and commercial development project. The general theme is that money changes hands, development moves forward and the taxpayers and consumers get stuck with the bill.

The story goes like this:

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Comments Submitted on Draft Cohesive Strategy

The Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) has embarked on a “Cohesive Strategy” planning process [here, here, here, here, here].

The “Cohesive Strategy” was mandated by the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement or FLAME Act [here, here, here].

A draft report entitled National Wildfire Management Report to Congress and Cohesive Strategy Draft has been issued [here, 3.2 MB] and comments were requested.

W.I.S.E. has complied and submitted our Comments today [here, 1.7MB].

Some additional comments:

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OFRI: Numbskulls On Parade

More money down the tubes. The Oregon Forest Resources Institute has issued a new “special” report six years in the making: Federal Forestland in Oregon - Coming To Terms With Active Forest Management of Federal Forestland [here, 3.1 glossy MB].

The report is “special” only in the sense that it is filled with errors, misstatements, and poppycock. Which is about what you’d expect from yet another government bureaucracy.

The Oregon Legislature created the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) in 1991 to improve public understanding of the state’s forest resources and to encourage environmentally sound forest management through training and other educational programs for forest landowners. OFRI is funded by a dedicated harvest tax on forest products producers [here].

Tax the victims, shove the knife in deeper, and twist it.

The problem with crappy forest policy is that it is based on crappy forest science. Political solutions crafted by numbskulls, with no conception of what it is they are attempting to regulate, is doomed to failure.

Failure is OFRI’s middle name.

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“Sustainability” Is an Unsustainable Marxist Hoax

We are pleased to announce that a new W.I.S.E. White Paper has been posted in our Forest and Fire Sciences Colloquium [here]:

Travis Cork III. 2010. The Market Illiteracy Embodied in the Politically Correct Version of Sustainability. W.I.S.E. White Paper No. 2010-4

This White Paper is an excellent cutting-edge review of the folly and fallacies of “sustainable forestry” programs, whether run directly by government or by government-affiliated special interest groups.

By way of introduction to the topic, the following note from the author describes some of the tragic consequences of the red tape Gordian Knot that is “sustainability” in practice.

******

Pick Your Poison While We Pick Your Pocket

By Travis Cork, Practicing Professional Forester and Forestry Consultant

When my client Bud E. called to find out why his property had been decertified as a Tree Farm, in his opinion “given a black mark,” he also asked if there were any advantages to being in the Tree Farm system.

I told him that there are no advantages, but there are plenty of disadvantages.

The parent of the Tree Farm System, American Forest Foundation (AFF), is an aggressive supporter of the one entity on Earth that most threatens sustainability. That entity is government at all levels. AFF supports programs that will allow their members to pick the pockets of other taxpayers, all supposedly in the name of sustainability.

That these programs are adding an unsustainable debt load that our children and grandchildren can never pay, does not seem to be a concern to AFF.

Apparently the one way Bud can remain in the Tree Farm system is to allow a bureaucrat with the South Carolina Forestry Commission (SCFC) to write a “management plan” that incorporates all of AFF’s standards of sustainability.

What about the SCFC? If we took it off the taxpayer teat, how would it pay its way? How would it be sustained?

The SCFC has survived as long as it has due in large part to the fact that the productive economy has created enough wealth which SCFC can siphon off without causing an uproar among taxpayers. By pricing the subsidized services it offers at below-market-rates, it finds and maintains a clientele simply by pricing competition out of the business. It also survives because of its access to government’s monopoly of legalized violence. It uses its regulatory authority to force its existence on us, even though there are superior ways to deal with issues such as BMPs and timber theft.

In fact, there is no person less qualified to write a management plan advancing true sustainability than a bureaucrat with any bureaucracy, be it SCFC, USFS, NRCS, FSA, or any other. Bureaucrats are isolated from any measure of profit and loss. For the NIPF [non-industrial private tree farmer], profit and loss matters. For the bureaucrat, as long as it can force the taxpayer to support it, profit and loss has little relevance. (If bureaucrats understood the true nature of sustainability, they would not be bureaucrats.)

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Corridor to Hell

by Scott Amos

Alas, it all makes sense.

Connecting Corridors Wilderness. And us tiny hamlet dwellers, pesky private property “owners” have “foiled” the plans to give bunnies super-highways all over the USA. Therefore it is our government’s “rightful duty” to steal our land, give it to the bunnies via H.R. 5101.

Waste millions and billions or gazillions of taxpayer dollars while the Chinese, Iranians, Russians and other foreign governments, not friendly to our own, sit back and laugh at our stupidity while we free-fall into socialism, communism, Marxism. Or worst of all, environmentally induced chaos!

Barack Obama truly has put the “mental” into “environmentalist.” He’s outdone decades of efforts by the KGB to weaken the USA from within, with the passage of one stupid bill. God save our country now. And I say that as an agnostic!

[Here] is a link to enlighten yourself about the trainwreck just thrust upon our nation, far worse than ANYTHING perpetrated by former president Jimmy Carter.

I can hear Jimmy Carter breathing a sigh of relief, to no longer be the worst president in history. I can hear the Russians breaking open champagne, the Chinese dancing in the streets, Kim Jong Ill preparing a speech about “victory over America” and Iran saying “at least we’re not so stupid we willingly run our own country into the dirt for the benefit of bunnies. Now we don’t need to bomb the infidels with nukes. Their pain under environmentalists is greater than any Allah could bestow upon them.”

Maybe Obama should have at least worked a real job before becoming president. Like working on a farm, before selling America the farm. Give him a basic understanding of how us taxpayers “earn” those dollars he’s throwing around loosely, through something called “sweat, blood and tears.”

On the brighter side of things, two more months until we stand a chance of repealing this law written by demon-bureaucrats suffering from a bad experiment with psychotropic drugs, or unlimited graft, or something. I sincerely hope this issue becomes a voting issue in the next two months.

The USA is flat broke and our representatives are spending untold sums of money borrowed from the Chinese, Russians, soon Iranians, or anyone else with credit better than our own. They are spending this borrowed money to steal our private property, close our only access roads, burn our houses down and bankrupt our rural communities. And people of the USFS are standing in line salivating at the chance to destroy many more rural communities.

Another Forest Tragedy

The Rooster Rock Fire [here] near Sisters, Oregon is now 6,124 acres and 65% contained. It is unlikely to grow any larger because winds have died down and the CO2’s (Central Oregon Type 2 Incident Management Team, Mark Rapp I.C.) in cooperation with the Oregon Dept. of Forestry have done their usual excellent job of controlling the fire.

The fire began from unknown causes on US Forest Service (Deschutes NF) land on August 2nd. It quickly spread east and south to private lands. Approximately three-quarters of the area burned by the Rooster Rock Fire is private land.

Rooster Rock Fire Map, 08/06/2010, courtesy Central Oregon IMT. Click for larger image.

The fire was about 5 miles south of Sisters. A few homes were evacuated, but the evacuations have now been lifted. An estimated 50 homes were threatened, but no homes burned.

The Rooster Rock Fire was the 13th large fire in the northern Deschutes NF in the last 8 years. Over 160,000 acres, primarily in the the Metolius River watershed, have been incinerated. The scar of burned old-growth now extends from Warm Springs to the north to the Three Sisters Wilderness to the south, from the Cascade Crest to private lands to the east. The following Burns make up this destroyed forest landscape (this list is missing a few smaller ones):

Cache Mountain Fire (2002) - 3,894 acs

Eyerly Complex Fires (2002) - 23,573 acs

B&B Complex Fires (2003) - 90,769 acs

Link Fire (2003) - 3,574 acs

Black Crater Fire (2006) - 9,400 acs

Puzzle Fire (2006) - 6,150 acs

Lake George Fire (2006) - 5,740 acs

GW Fire (2007) - 7,500 acs

Dry Creek Fire (2008) - 110 acs

Summit Springs Complex Fires (2008) - 1,973 acs

Wizard Fire (2008) - 1,840 acs

Black Butte II Fire (2009) - 578 acs

Rooster Rock Fire (2010) - 6,124 acs

Total - 161,225 acres in eight fire seasons

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Fire the Entire BLM

Mr. Tamper just got caught in his lies again. Sec Int Kenny Salazar has tampered with science documents relating to offshore drilling [here], he tampered with the the Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) and the Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan (NSORP) [here], and now a document Kenny refused to provide Congress, under subpoena, has been leaked.

Kenny’s secret Treasured Landscapes blueprint for subverting democracy has been outed:

BLM document reveals big change in federal land management

By Sarah Dallof, KSL.com, August 5th, 2010 [here]

SALT LAKE CITY — KSL 5 News has obtained a document that outlines a huge change in how the federal government wants to manage federal land in Utah, and one Utah congressman says it makes him furious.

Congressman Rob Bishop’s office also recently received the document. Bishop said he’s angry because it would put virtually all land management power in the hands of the White House.

“Of the 264 million acres under BLM management, some 130- to 140-million acres are worthy of consideration as treasured lands. These areas [are] roughly equivalent in size to Colorado and Wyoming combined.” - BLM’s Treasured Landscapes paper

A portion of the document was leaked back in February [here] and led to speculation about a federal land grab in Utah. It talked about the creation of a 12 new national monuments.

Now, an outside source provided KSL with the entire document [here], and it does suggest a dramatically new philosophy for managing federal land.

The Bureau of Land Management’s document is stamped with “Internal Draft. Not for release.” Titled “Treasured Landscapes,” it lays out what some consider a sweeping and detailed plan for the next 25 years.

It took Bishop months to get the document, which lays out the context for the snippets released a few months ago. …

Among the key elements in the document:

BLM-managed public lands include rugged mountains, wild deserts and America’s last vesitges of large, untamed landscapes. These landscapes first captured the pioneer spirit and cultivated America’s romantic ideals of the Wild West.

Note the paean to a myth, the American Creation Myth. The use of the words “wild”, “untamed”, “pioneer spirit”, and “romantic ideals” indicate stark denial of previous habitation over thousands of years. Not only were those inhabitants wiped out and/or marched to reservations, the perpetrators of those outrages now deny even the existence of the First Residents.

It’s a a big Wild West according to the unnamed spin-doctor mythologists who wrote this document. Except it isn’t.

The BLM estimates that 35 million acres of its current landholdings, all of which have been identified by the public as worthy of special protection, should be considered for a new and heightened conservation designation. …

Should the legislation process not prove fruitful, or if a nationally significant natural or cultural land resource were to come under the threat of imminent harm, BLM would recommend that the Administration consider using the Antiquities Act to designate new National Monuments by Presidential Proclamation.

Well, it’s Wild, except where it’s cultural. But in any case, screw the established Congressional oversight and just declare 35 million acres of new “wilderness” against the will of our elected representatives.

We don’t need no stinking democracy around here.

Better accounting for the value of public lands left in a condition closer to the land’s natural state — whether measured in the amount of carbon sequestered by a stand of trees or native grasslands …

There’s the Gloooobal Waaarming Card. The BLM is going to sequester that carbon, until they incinerate it in one their Let It Burn holocausts, that is. It’s natural.

…Congress has limited the President’s authority to designate new national monuments in Wyoming and Alaska. … The BLM therefore particularly proposes that the Administration use the BLM’s land-use planning process .. to protect sensitive resources in Wyoming and Alaska.

We don’t need no stinking Congress telling us what to do. We can shut down whole states using our internal “process” and subvert the will of Congress. We’re the BLM; we’re bigger than those stinking elected doowahs. Hahahahahaha!

Maybe the best solution is to fire the entire workforce of the BLM today. They have grown too big for their britches. Maybe a few years in the unemployment line will knock them down a peg or two. Because this country does not belong to the trough sucking functionaries. They are mere servants to the public. The public are the actual owners. We do things democratically, via our elected representatives, in this country. Our democratic system is anathema to the BLM, and unfortunately anti-democracy is an intolerable attitude in our servant class.

Or we could just fire Mr. Tamper, and let that send a message to the suckers in the trough.

It’s really up to Congress. Are they going to put up with a subversive as Sec Int, or are they going to assert democracy?

Smart money says Congress are subversives themselves, and democracy will lose. Again.

Station Fire Probe - The View From Under the Bus

The LA Times reported today that CA Congress-types are called for a “sweeping probe” into the actions (and/or inactions) of the US Forest Service during the Station Fire.

Lawmakers seek broad probe into Forest Service response to Station fire

By Paul Pringle, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2010 [here]

California’s two U.S. senators and several local House members Thursday called on Congress’ investigative arm to launch a sweeping probe into the Forest Service’s response to last summer’s disastrous Station fire.

In asking for the investigation by the Government Accountability Office, which typically grants such requests, the lawmakers recommended a broad examination of the Forest Service’s decisions and tactics. Those include the use of aircraft early in the fight and the question of whether everything possible was done to protect homes that burned in Big Tujunga Canyon.

The legislators also cited the disclosure this week that telephone dispatch recordings made during the fire were withheld from a Forest Service review team and the public. The Times requested the recordings last year and again this year, but Forest Service officials said they did not exist. …

In addition to Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, the signers include Reps. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), Judy Chu (D-El Monte) and Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks). …

The aforementioned letter [here] states in part:

Both the Forest Service and Los Angeles County Fire Department have conducted reviews of the fire and the response from both of these agencies. However, we have learned today that critical Forest Service dispatch recordings from the start of the fire were withheld from federal review teams. This casts a dark cloud over the findings of the review panel and immediately warrants an independent review of the Station Fire response.

Our purpose for this review is to ensure that all actions in the response to the fire were taken swiftly, properly and competently. Our constituents must know that every possible, reasonable and proper action was taken to fight the fire, and if there were instances where the proper actions were not taken, we must know why.”
It continues:

Most important, we must establish what lessons were learned from this devastating fire. By identifying mistakes made and where different choices would have caused better outcomes, agencies tasked with preventing and fighting fires will be able to better prepare and respond in the future.

We have discussed the Station Fire previously [here, here, here, here].

We have noted how the LA Times has flip-flopped from advocating cutbacks in aerial firefighting, because it is allegedly a waste of money, to decrying the alleged failure to employ timely and expensive aerial firefighting on the Station Fire.

Now Congress is joining the critics.

The USFS made a decision years ago to kowtow to the pro-holocausters, instituting a program of allowing wildfires to burn without any effort to contain, control, or extinguish them. Many of those fires have blown up and caused devastating damage to natural and human-built resources. It must have seemed to the USFS to be the politically expedient thing to do, because there is no other justification for incinerating vast tracts of America’s heritage forests, watersheds, homes, and towns.

Now, when a wildfire has impacted the heart of pro-holocauster neighborhoods in LaLa, the political goodwill the USFS thought it was accumulating has disappeared in a puff (or plume) of smoke. Their supposed political allies have thrown the Agency under the bus.

Let that be a Lesson Learned.

Political types are fickle. They have no loyalty, especially when their policies are ignorant, malformed, and destructive. Political expediency is a slippery prey. Instead of lunging for the expedient, the USFS should remain true to their statutory mission of good stewardship, regardless of whichever way the political winds might blow.

Now the piper has come home to roost. The view from under the bus is not a happy one.

How is the USFS responding? Have they learned their lesson? Not yet. The LA Times reports:

Meanwhile, the inspector general also will examine whether the Forest Service had the legal authority to record phone calls to the Angeles dispatch center without the consent of all callers. Radio dispatch communications are routinely recorded, but the Forest Service wants the inspector general to determine whether the phone recordings violated privacy rights, agency officials said.

In an internal memorandum Wednesday that was obtained by The Times, Forest Service Deputy Chief James Hubbard ordered all dispatch centers to stop recording calls until the matter is resolved.

That is called “circling the wagons” and it is ill-advised.

The USFS has suspended recording emergency dispatch calls? Whom in those communications is a “private” party? Do we suspend recording of 911 calls because some government official screwed up in an emergency?

Is secrecy the best course of action? Has stonewalling worked to date? A famous rule of excavation is: if you find yourself in a deep hole, stop digging.

The USFS needs to realize that full transparency and honest stewardship efforts will serve them best in the long run. Otherwise they will be tire-tracked by the Big Political Bus again and again.

Bringing Back the Dark Ages

There is a curious irony that may (or may not) have troubled you: given that the public lands are already communally-owed, that is, communized, why do the Communists wish to destroy said lands?

The Extreme Left is more than fashionably Socialist; they are Marxists, i.e. Communists. Of that there is no doubt. The most Extreme Leftists are Revolutionary Communists. Oh sure, you have your Marxist anarchists who are indeed dangerous crazies, but they are only “scum”, as Marx put it, not the “vanguard of scientific socialism”.

The “dangerous class”, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. — Karl Marx, in his famous Manifesto [here]

It’s not the dangerous scum anarchists who wish to destroy the public lands (street people couldn’t care less about forests); it is the vanguard of proletarian revolution, the scientific socialists.

Which is ironic. They won the class struggle, at least vis-à-vis public lands. In Oregon fully 60% of the land base, and possibly more, is communally-owned. Ditto many other Western states. Hurrah for Marxism!

But instead of holding up public lands as a shining example of the virtues of Communism, the vanguard of scientific socialism wish to destroy those lands in catastrophic megafires. They oppose any and all nurturing treatments that might mitigate against wholesale destruction, and instead advocate No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch it Rot across vast dehumanized tracts.

So what gives? Why is the vanguard so anxious to wipe out their own holdings?

The answer is: they don’t give a rap about forests or watersheds or whether the land is publicly-owned or not. What true Communists care about is fomenting violent revolutionary war.

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To the Oregonian: Thanks For Nothing

The following Editorial appeared in the Oregonian “news” paper last Friday:

On timber, thanks for nothing

by the Oregonian Editorial Board, July 23, 2010 [here]

After a year of study, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s crackerjack task force on western Oregon timber management has concluded that, gee, lots of people are frustrated and things are pretty tough out there.

We can’t wait for next year’s sequel in which the Obama task force is invited back to take another yearlong look and rediscovers that, believe it or not, lots of people remain frustrated and things are pretty tough out there.

This could go on forever. It would be laughable if the unemployment rate across much of rural Oregon wasn’t running at 12 to 15 percent, if timber towns weren’t trying desperately to hold together their basic public services such as police and libraries, if huge swaths of public forests weren’t overstocked with small trees one lightning strike or tossed cigarette away from going up in flames late this summer.

We made the mistake of taking the interior secretary at his word last year when the Obama administration abandoned the Western Oregon Plan Revision, or WOPR, which sought to increase logging on more than 2 million acres of public forests. Salazar promised that the task force would come up with a plan that would increase logging and thinning while complying with the Endangered Species Act.

Instead, the task force issued a report Thursday that calls for a three- to five-year planning process and concludes what everybody already knows: Major obstacles such as distrust among competing interest groups and conflicting federal policies stand in the way of increasing logging on western Oregon’s public forests and creating more economic activity in rural communities.

Given all that rural Oregon is struggling with, this “plan to have a plan,” as Oregon’s Rep. Peter DeFazio described it Thursday, is inexcusable. There’s no urgency in the task force report, no acknowledgement of the economic emergency, no commitment to provide any leadership to help resolve the conflicts over management of the public forests. As Rep. Greg Walden said, “It’s doubly frustrating that while this report was being put together, timber sales dropped to historic lows. The sick forests and the economy in southern Oregon can’t wait any longer.” …

Let’s clear the air here. The Oregonian Editorial Board supported and endorsed Barky Obama for president, knowing full well that Barky expressed zero forest policy or agricultural policy during his campaign, and knowing full well that the most extreme anti-forest elements were affiliated with Barky.

Now the Oregonian Editorial Board claims they “made the mistake of taking the interior secretary at his word.” What about taking Barky at his word, or lack of words?

The Western Oregon Plan Revision was the result of years of planning, public meetings, and public involvement with an open, transparent process. Why did the Oregonian Editorial Board sit in mute dumbfoundedness when Salazar, acting on behalf of Barky and his radical minions, jerked the WOPR away illegally?

You see, it was an illegal act on Salazar’s part to TAMPER with a public process. Salazar also jerked the Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, twenty years in the making, because, as Salazar claimed, the plans were potentially jeopardized by improper political influence.

So Salazar, acting on Barky’s orders, undertook the biggest political tampering action possible: he unilaterally and illegally threw both plans in the dumpster.

And the Oregonian Editorial Board was just fine with all that. They approved. Now, all of a sudden, they claim that they were somehow deceived.

It won’t wash, gentlemen. You were never deceived — you were the deceivers, then and now.

The Oregonian Editorial Board claims to be concerned about unemployment in rural Oregon, tinder box forests, and an unresponsive Federal Government.

Well guess what? That’s been the situation for SIXTEEN YEARS!!!!!

The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan had (has) four fundamental goals. It has failed spectacularly to meet any of them.

1. The NWFP has failed to protect northern spotted owls

By most estimations, the northern spotted owl population has fallen 40 to 60 percent since inception of the NWFP.

2. The NWFP has failed to protect spotted owl habitat

Since inception, millions of acres of spotted owl habitat have been catastrophically incinerated. Millions more acres are poised to burn.

3. The NWFP has failed to preserve habitat continuity throughout the range of the northern spotted owl

The dozens of huge and catastrophic forest fires have left giant gaps in the range. The Biscuit Burn alone is 50 miles long and 20 miles wide.

4. The NWFP has failed to protect the regional economy

Since inception of the NWFP, Oregon has experienced 16 long years of the worst economy in the U.S., with the highest rates of unemployment, bankruptcy, home foreclosure, and hunger of any state. These are not just statistics, but indicators of real human suffering. Over 40,000 workers lost their jobs, and the rural economy has been crippled ever since.

The plan to save the owls has not saved anything; not owls, not old-growth, not the economy. The cost for nothing? $100,000 per job per year x 40,000 jobs x 16 years = $64 billion. That’s what Northwesterners have paid, for nothing. And the bills continue to mount.

Sixteen years of gross Federal forest stupidity and the Oregonian Editorial Board hasn’t noticed until now?

But let’s not cast all the blame on those pathetic schmucks. Let’s look at the politicians they mentioned. Rep. Peter DeFazio has been in that office for 24 years, Sen. Ron Wyden has been in Congress for 20 years, 12 as senator, and Rep. Greg Walden has been in Congress for 12 years.

They all have done exactly nothing in all that time to address or amend the Northwest Forest Plan.

Now that is truly inexcusable.

We have re-elected and re-elected mendacious jingoists who every election season stand up on their hind legs and rail against the atrocious un-management of Oregon’s Federal forests, and then when re-elected go back their D.C. party life while doing jack s**t about Oregon’s perpetual forest crisis.

They all claim to “have a plan”. They all claim that they have a bill in their pants that will solve everything. But the bills somehow never get past first base, and any careful examination explains why: the proposed bills are poorly written, completely unworkable, and wouldn’t solve anything if they were passed, which they never will be because the sponsors are frauds and just jerking the electorate around.

They all pretend to be shocked and aghast at the condition of Federal forests in Oregon, and the ongoing misery in rural Oregon, as if it just occurred to them last week.

None of them spoke up in 1994 when the supremely crappy NWFP was jammed down our throats. None of them has done one damn thing about it since.

So blank you, Oregonian Editorial Board, and blank you, Oregon Congressoafs and Senaturds.

You all ARE the problem. You all have perpetuated and exacerbated Oregon’s forest crisis. Nobody is fooled when you cry crocodile tears and blame Barky and Ken. You wanted those guys, just like you want Oregon’s forests to burn in megafires and rural Oregonians to suffer deprivations and poverty.

Your feigned outrage doesn’t cut it anymore. You are all cads and bounders. A pox on all of you.

Bio Irony, Warmer Is Better Dept.

The new thing is biodiversity.

Globalists recognize the growing collapse of gloooobal waaaarming alarmism as a tool to advance One World Authoritarian government, so they have revived the U.N. Agenda 21 scare over allegedly declining biodiversity — to accomplish the same goal [here, here].

But, and here’s the irony, warmer climates have greater biodiversity. The warmer it is, the more biodiversity, and the cooler it is, the less.

Technically, biodiversity means the number of plant and animal species per unit area. In the tropics (warm climates) there are sometimes thousands of species per acre. In boreal and/or tundra regions (cold climates), there may be less than a dozen species per acre.

The definition is important. The U.N. defines “biodiversity” in a squishy fashion [here]:

Biodiversity is an all encompassing term to describe the variety of all life and natural processes on Earth.

The Convention on Biological Diversity defines biodiversity as “the variability among living organisms from all sources [...] this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems” (Article 2, CBD).

But technically, biologists measure biodiversity using indices such as Simpson’s diversity index [here], the Shannon index [here], or species richness [here].

Those indices all express some variant of number of species per unit area. And measurements of biodiversity all indicate the same general condition: Equatorial latitudes have high biodiversity, and polar latitudes have low biodiversity (Antarctica has the lowest biodiversity on the planet).

A new study from Harvard hypothesizes that seasonality impacts biodiversity [here]. The authors note that during the Eocene (54.8-33.7 mya) [here], biodiversity was at its highest point in the history of the Earth. The authors conjecture that the onset of seasons, with wide temperature swings between summer and winter, were the primary cause of subsequent biodiversity loss.

But overall temperature appears to be a more important factor. Global temperatures reached their highest post-Cretaceous levels at about the Paleocene-Eocene transition, and they have been falling ever since. At least five major extinction events occurred in the Eocene alone:

The Lutetian-Bartonian event (41 mya)

The Bartonian-Priabonian event (37 mya)

The Late Priabonian event (35 mya)

The Terminal Eocene event (33.5 mya)

The Late Rupelian event (30.5 mya)

All these extinction events were associated with reductions in global temperature, thinning CO2, declining rainfall, and falling sea levels.

Seasonality has always been a phenomenon of our planet, and is due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, also known as obliquity [here]. The tilt is nothing new. The Earth has been tilted for billions of years.

However, seasonality did become more pronounced as the Eocene gave way to the Oligocene (35.4-29.3 mya) [here] and even more so during the Miocene (29.3-6.7 mya). Then the Ices Ages ensued, and seasonality grew even stronger. But it was not the difference between the seasons that was so damaging to biodiversity — it was the fact that the climate across much of the globe dropped below freezing.

When the temperature is so cold that water turns to ice, life in general perishes. Living things are liquid water-based. We die if the water in our bodies turns to solid ice.

Some plants and animals have evolved defenses against sub-freezing temperatures, such as thick fur, internal body heat regulation, and dormancy. The Order of Mammals arose during the Eocene but really expanded as the climate grew colder. Deciduousness (winter dormancy in trees) also arose in the Eocene, first in response to six-month dark periods above the Arctic Circle. Trees that expressed winter dormancy migrated south during the Oligocene and Miocene, where their resilience to freezing conditions gave them competitive advantage.

The article about the Harvard paper states:

At the time [the Eocene] the McAbee fossils were created, Earth’s climate was far less seasonal at all latitudes, allowing tropical species, such as palm trees and crocodiles, to live in what is now the high Arctic.

But as must be obvious to everyone, lack of seasonality was not the thing that allowed crocodiles to bask under palm trees in the Arctic. Warmth was. Crocodiles and palm trees today live where seasons come and go, but they do not live where it’s cold.

The article continues:

When the Arctic was warm in the past, like the rest of the planet, it had a high degree of biodiversity, like the tropics do today.

That statement is more acceptable. Note that it says nothing about seasons.

When the earth was warmer than today, such as in the Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene, there was much greater biodiversity.

If significant global warming occurs in the future (which is very doubtful), it will be good for biodiversity.

The U.N. is working at cross-purposes with itself. It wants to chill the planet but also wishes to increase biodiversity. Those are mutually exclusive goals.

The U.N. also desires One World Authoritarian government, but as must be obvious to everyone, One World Authoritarian government would not improve anything. We would still have nutzo leaders who work at cross-purposes with themselves, much to the detriment of humanity as well as to the environment.

One Worlders are not your friends. Nor are they friends of the environment. But that is restating the obvious.

Karl Marx Despised Private Property

As does our very own U.S. Congress. No matter what those silly Founders thought, the new “progressive” notion is that private property is bad for America.

Witness HR 3534 [here] now wending it’s way through the “process” (in quotes because the Congressional process has been perverted almost beyond recognition by our esteemed Senators and Representatives).

HR 3534 is the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act of 2009. The ostensible purpose of the Bill is to transfer the Minerals Management Service and the Oil and Gas Management program to a brand new sub-secretariat in the Department of the Interior: the new and progressive Office of Federal Energy and Minerals Leasing.

As if shuffling the bureaucracy will prevent oil well blow-outs.

But tacked onto HR 3534 is an amendment to the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act which would make $900 million available from the Fund each fiscal year without further appropriation for the next 30 years!

For those who don’t wish to do the math themselves, that’s $27 billion for federal bureaucracies to purchase private properties and absorb them into the bloated Federal Estate.

How bloated is it, you ask? Here are some stats:

* Total acres owned by the federal government in the United States: 653,299,090 acres

* Total land base of United States: 2.27 billion acres

* 29% of all U.S. land is owned by the federal government

Where federal land is located, by region:

West: 54.1%
Alaska & Hawaii: 38.8%
North Central: 2.8%
South Central: 2.4%
South Atlantic & DC: 1.7%
Northeast: 0.24%

In five states the federal government owns the majority of land within the state border. In these states, the federal government has control over more land than the Governor or the legislature of the state. These “non-sovereign” states are:

Nevada: 84.5%
Alaska: 69.1%
Utah: 57.5%
Oregon: 53.1%
Idaho: 50.2%

In seven states the federal government owns more than one-fourth of all land within the state border. These “semi-sovereign” states are:

Arizona: 48.1%
California: 45.3%
Wyoming: 42.3%
New Mexico: 41.8%
Colorado: 36.6%
Washington: 30.3%
Montana: 29.9%

Of course, once the Fed’s take control of the private property, their practice is to burn it to ashes in catastrophic megafires, converting forests, watersheds, etc. to scorched earth wastelands.

Isn’t Marxism great?

For more on this subject, please see:

The CLEAR Act of Another Federal Land Grab

By Cassandra Anderson, MORPHcity, July 21, 2010 [here]

U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) addressed Congress on July 15th to report the Natural Resources Committee’s passage of HR 3534, the Consolidated Land, Energy and Aquatic Resources Act (CLEAR Act) of 2009. Congressman Gohmert said that the bill was to “deal with the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico” but it contains plans for the federal government to acquire land and was introduced in 2009. …

Congressman Gohmert pointed out that a portion of the CLEAR Act contains a provision for the federal government to spend $900 million a year to purchase private land over the next 30 years, for a grand total of $27 billion dollars over 3 decades. …

Gohmert was incredulous that the federal government intends to raise its purchasing allocations to $900 million a year for the next 30 years and questioned “how in the world does that make sense”? …

Wyden Guzzles the AGW Kool Aid

It is not surprising. Our New York based Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is a full-blown AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarmist.

Ron thinks, no he is positive, that human beings impact the global climate, and that Americans should be saddled with punishing taxes designed to strangle our economy in order to “fix” the “problem”.

In actual fact, global warming is not happening. The globe has been cooling steadily for the last 12 years or so, and cooling unsteadily for the last 6,000 years. There is no causal connection between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures. Therefore humanity cannot be blamed for global warming, nor can we do anything about it, nor should we since global warming would be a good thing if it were to happen, which it is not.

All of that logic is wasted on Ron Wyden, who is New York based and completely out of touch with reality on oh so many levels. He supports Cap-N’-Taxilla and the crushing demise of our economy.

I know it sounds crazy, and it is, but here you go:

Subject: Response from Senator Ron Wyden to your e-mail
From: Senator Ron Wyden
To: Dr. Gordon Fulks, Ph.D.
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010

Dear Dr. Fulks:

Thank you for contacting me to share your concerns about climate change legislation. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

As you know, on June 26, 2009, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454), comprehensive legislation to address climate change. The Senate is currently considering similar legislation, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733).

I respect the right of everyone to form their own opinion about global climate change. As a U.S. Senator, however, it is also my job to make decisions based on the best scientific evidence available — the overwhelming majority of which suggests human actions do impact the world’s climate. While I am concerned about recent revelations of potential data misuse by a university in the United Kingdom, decades of peer-reviewed research has consistently shown that climate change is real and is a critical threat to our planet. Underscoring this point, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with 90 percent certainty that human activities are significantly responsible for climate change. This report is among the latest evidence to confirm the likelihood of global warming, and it lists hotter weather, droughts, and stronger hurricanes as foreseeable consequences of our continued actions. We have also had testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, of which I am a member, that climate change is likely increasing the environmental stress on our forests and contributing to a growing threat of catastrophic forest fires. Accordingly, I believe the time has come to act on this critical environmental challenge in a way that will not undermine our economy.

That is why I have supported bipartisan legislation that would implement climate solutions on a gradual basis. For example, the Lieberman-Warner bill I supported in the 110th Congress would have gradually reduced America’s greenhouse gas emissions from factories and power plants by the year 2050. The bill did not regulate emissions from the agricultural and timber sectors, but those sectors could contribute to reducing emissions of green houses gases, on a voluntary basis. It would have also established a market-driven system of tradable credits, which has been successful elsewhere in limiting emissions without placing an undue burden on businesses.

Please know that while I support action to address climate change, I will only support fair legislation that protects Oregon’s farming, ranching, and timber industries and recognizes the tough economic times that Oregonians are facing. Although we may disagree on this issue, I am sure there others on which we do agree. Again, thank you for keeping me apprised of your interest in this issue. If I may be of further assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Ron Wyden
United States Senator