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Hobby Forum Index » Outdoors - National Parks » THE COST OF KERRY: RENEWED WAR ON THE WEST
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| ShareTheWoods |
 Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 12:16 am |
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http://www.gop.gov/item-news.asp?docId=59647
President Bush is leading steady progress toward a more rational, realistic and
responsible approach to a host of environmental and resource issues close to
the hearts of all Idahoans.
For three years, the Bush administration has been encouraging stewardship,
engaging those who know and understand the issues best. The idea is that people
most influenced by federal policies should play a larger role in developing
them. The President is committed to being a partner with local folks in the
best interest of people and the resources on which they depend.
President Bush is working to roll back policies from eight years of
big-government, one-size-fits-all thinking on such issues as public lands
access, water sovereignty, wildlife management and sustainable use of natural
resources. It’s not easy. Shifting an entrenched bureaucracy’s direction
can be like turning a battleship – you can’t do it on a dime.
Now a presidential election year has us facing the prospect of a renewed War on
the West. The bottom line is: If you liked Bill Clinton and Al Gore, you’ll
love John Kerry.
Kerry promises to be “the true environmental President.” To me, few things
are scarier than a Massachusetts politician imposing his idea of
“environmental” on the people of Idaho. What could be a more inviting
canvas for making his mark on that issue than a state where two-thirds of the
land already is controlled by the federal government?
Kerry showed his colors in 2001 when the Bureau of Reclamation shut off
irrigation water to almost 2,000 farm and ranch families in the Klamath Basin
of southern Oregon and northern California. Kerry backed the move to protect
suckerfish, and later called for an investigation of the Bush White House for
even considering recognition of humans as a species too.
He’s talking balance now, but can we doubt where he’ll stand when his
friends press him to breach the lower Snake River dams or grab all the water in
the Snake River Basin for a wrongheaded “fish flush” salmon strategy? Kerry
clearly considers the Endangered Species Act the supreme law of the land. After
all, the League of Conservation Voters didn’t endorse him for putting the
interests of real people first.
Some of Kerry’s most vocal supporters have been working for years with the
Alliance for the Wild Rockies to pass the radical Northern Rockies Ecosystem
Protection Act. The bill would lock up 26 million acres of new and de facto
wilderness in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Kerry also says he’d implement
Clinton’s contentious and discredited rule blocking roads and logging on more
than 50 million acres of national forest lands. And he’d bar snowmobiles from
Yellowstone National Park “and other sensitive areas.”
Clearly, a Kerry administration would embolden environmental extremists to
press an aggressive agenda of restricting access and responsible use of public
lands.
The Bush administration has started the process of scaling back Endangered
Species Act protection for the non-native Canadian gray wolves transplanted to
Idaho in the mid-1990s against the will of most Idahoans. Kerry, on the other
hand, eagerly talks about implementing the Endangered Species Act in a way that
“extends the benefits of wildlife and habitat protection to public and
private lands.” Will grizzly bears be the next species “reintroduced” to
displace Idaho’s livestock, big game – and people?
While Kerry supports importing species, he’s against getting nuclear waste
out of Idaho. He opposes opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in
Nevada, where the Energy Department wants to take tons of high-level
radioactive waste now at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental
Laboratory. That waste will remain above our Snake River Plain Aquifer if Kerry
is elected. It’s as simple as that.
All that most Idahoans ask of government is to stay out of the way. We have a
good idea how to take care of our resources, sustain them and even add value,
without East Coast help. Well, John Kerry has a lot less trust in the wisdom
and good intentions of Idahoans, or people in general. He wants to establish a
new “Environmental Enforcement Commission.” It apparently would be a kind
of Super EPA to crack down when “environmental enforcement has been
compromised by undue political influence” – meaning influence by anyone
other than environmental extremists.
After eight years in the political wilderness, it’s been refreshing to have
someone in the White House who understands and respects our Western lifestyle
and values. Occasionally visiting a mansion in Sun Valley doesn’t make John
Kerry an Idahoan, and we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking this Massachusetts
liberal will listen to us when ultra-green groups remind him of his roots. |
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| d |
| Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 2:10 pm |
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| Jim |
| Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 2:10 pm |
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Guest
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Orwellian propaganda, nothing more.
More of the same old, same old republican strategy.
George Orwell's "1984" begins with protagonist Winston Smith
questioning the contradictions in the ruling party's philosophy: War
is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The novel ends
with a broken and brainwashed Winston <Sharethewoods/Melanie>
believing that "2 plus 2 equals 5."
Bush creates Orwellian society
By Matthew Brophy
Minnesota Daily
September 27, 2002
Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace; Ignorance is Strength. This is the
motto heralded by Big Brother in George Orwells book, 1984. This
motto might as well be from the George W. Bush administration. Since
the tragic Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has incrementally
been seizing power, desecrating the U.S. Constitution and
subordinating our civil rights in the name of national security.
We are told that to protect freedom, we must forfeit our liberties. To
have peace, we must fight a prolonged war. To be strong, we must be
kept ignorant of our governments actions. In short, to be good
Americans we must believe in apparent contradictions and submit to our
government entirely.
The parallels between Orwells dystopian vision and Bushs post-Sept.
11 governmental policies are so striking some journalists have
facetiously accused Bush of plagiarism. Orwells book depicts a
society dominated by a totalitarian government in which citizens
liberties are suppressed on the basis of an endless war. In post-Sept.
11 America, the same reasoning is being used to justify turning our
nation into a police state.
In Orwells society, a person can be arrested not just for public
speech, but for their private thoughts as well. In our nation, this
nightmare has come to life through Bushs USA Patriot Act. This act
enables law enforcement departments to spy on citizens and
non-citizens alike: To read private e-mail correspondence, monitor
Internet usage, tap into phone conversations, delve into computer
files and conduct sneak-and-peak searches of homes and offices
without immediately, if ever, presenting residents with a search
warrant. Law enforcement no longer needs judicial oversight or
probable cause. So, be careful: Big Brother is watching.
Furthermore, this act states that citizens and non-citizens can be
detained on mere suspicion. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, more than
1,100 immigrants have been imprisoned. The charges against them remain
undisclosed; even their names and identities remain largely unknown.
The Bush administration admits these prisoners are not terrorists. So
far, the FBI has racially profiled and interrogated more than 5,000
recent immigrants. Those immigrants Bush deems terrorists can be
tried before closed military tribunals rather than in open court.
In Orwells society, citizens join the government in the suppression
of speech and thought; citizens constantly monitor neighbors and
coworkers, informing the government if a person seems suspicious.
Bushs Operation TIPS makes such paranoid spying a reality. This
program asks mail deliverers, utility meter readers, truckers and
other citizens to spy on their neighbors and customers, and report any
suspicious activity that could be related to terrorism. A recent
example of TIPS in action occurred just two weeks ago. Three men were
detained, searched and interrogated for being overheard apparently
joking about Sept. 11 at a restaurant in Georgia. Bush and a federal
law enforcement official in Washington eventually exculpated the men,
reporting they had no evident ties to terrorism.
Increasingly, it seems we must all be wary of saying or doing anything
that could be construed as subversive; after all, your neighbor might
turn you in to the thought police. The reach of the thought police has
even extended to academia, where certain factions have attempted to
stifle the free exchange of ideas. The American Council of Trustees
and Alumni, for example, has sought to blacklist more than 40
professors who were deemed anti-American. One professor, an emeritus
from the University of Oregon, was blacklisted for recommending that
we need to understand the reasons behind the terrifying hatred
directed against the U.S. and find ways to act that will not foment
more hatred for generations to come. Even one of the Daily columnists
has received threatening letters for suggesting that U.S. foreign
policy might be somewhat casually responsible for terrorism.
It seems that to be strong and united, we must silence all dissenting
voices. Attorney General John Ashcroft has declared that critics of
the Bush administrations post-Sept. 11 measures only aid terrorists
and give ammunition to Americas enemies. For this reason, the Bush
administration has explained we need to suspend certain liberties
for the duration of the war.
The message is clear: To criticize America, right or wrong, is either
to be unpatriotic or, worse, to be a terrorist sympathizer (Does
anyone smell McCarthyism yet?). It seems ignorant patriotism has
become a virtue.
The Bush administration has heavily promoted the idea of ignorance as
strength. On this basis, it is making sure the media and American
public are kept ignorant. Invoking the excuse of national security,
the Bush administration has imposed heavy restrictions on what we can
know. For example, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security
includes an exemption from the Freedom from Information Act.
Additionally, the military has disallowed journalists from
accompanying American forces fighting in Afghanistan and even from
interviewing military personnel after their missions.
In addition to this governmental censorship, the media has even
censored itself. CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson, for instance, ordered
his news staff to limit reports of Afghan casualties and to use World
Trade Center deaths to justify the killing abroad. Furthermore, the
largest U.S. radio station owner, Clear Channel, sent out an internal
memo prohibiting certain songs from being played on the air
including Imagine by John Lennon.
In Orwells society, the duration of the war is never-ending, waged
against an enemy that is ever-changing and ambiguous. The same is true
of Bushs declared war on terrorism. This war has no fixed,
geographical definition. It is directed against an expansive axis of
evil and a shadowy faction known as al-Qaida. Moreover, this war has
been estimated to continue indefinitely (current estimates say at
least 10 years).
This ambiguous, protracted crusade is an efficient way to fuel the
hatred and fear necessary to justify the Bush administrations seize
of power. With the winds of war behind him, and a 90 percent approval
rating, Bush has hurdled the checks and balances of the other two
governmental branches and has used war as an excuse to increase his
dominance and serve his administrations interests for example,
finishing his dads business in Iraq or squelching opposition to NAFTA
and the WTO.
To rally the war cry, Bush spews monosyllabic propaganda,
simplistically characterizing the terrorists purpose to be to attack
our freedom, and that those individuals and nations who oppose our
policies are satanically evil. We, of course by contrast, are
righteous and good. Disregard our past alliances with these evil
regimes, our training and financing of radical Islamist terrorists,
our forcible replacements of democracies with dictatorships or any
instances of our past foreign policy that might be relevant to
understanding why the United States is resented in many parts of the
world.
Terrorism isnt what terrifies me. I fear fear itself. As a result of
our nations fear, our constitution is being desecrated, civil rights
are being trampled, and our democratic nation is degenerating into a
fascist regime. Disturbingly, it seems the only inaccuracy of Orwells
prescient book is that it was 17 years off.
Surely we must make some sacrifices in times of war, yet we must not
sacrifice the very principles upon which the United States was
founded. In the words of one of our founding fathers, Benjamin
Franklin, They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
2002 The Minnesota Daily |
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| Tom Beno |
| Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2004 3:12 pm |
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Guest
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"d" <dos@nospam.me> wrote in message
news:dos-75087B.14024714072004@netnews.comcast.net...
Good article - I agree with much of it, especially this paragraph:
"Admittedly, I will vote against George W. Bush this year - not because I am a
Democrat - because of his complete failure to be a courageous leader."
At least that fella has the intelligence to make a rational, independent
decision, rather than just blindly following along and doing what he's told by
his Bushie "leaders."
==========================
Quote: Do us a favor Rush, Al, Mel, Beno, Muskie and take a hike.
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You want a favor - here's a clue....(sshhhh! it's a secret!)...
"If you don't like it, don't read it." |
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