Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Baby goes Green   Given the current assault on our public lands Blog Baby is taking up the environment as a cause.  Hopefully, she will find her voice and her desire to make some positive impact on the destruction she sees happening around her.  See the new Category called Baby Goes Green for a permanent repository of these articles.   To that end, this will be a set of links to articles of interest, organizations, etc. of people who wish to band together to reverse the Bush Co. plan to privatize our national heritage.   Please note:  The following articles are listed oldest at the top.  New ones are added at the bottom. The most critical article is one that lays out the neocon plan to privatize our public lands and national parks. Here is an important article on the issue of logging on our public forests. The first article is from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle entitled – What Would Teddy Think. Here is an article written by one of my Blog Sisters Kate S. about what is going on with ANWR. Earth Justice has this article about Bush Co. current Public Lands Policies. Republicons has an article about Bush Co. lowering pollution standards and its general attacks on the environment. More on the Bush Co. pollution record. Wild Wilderness has a lot of info about the move to privatize. Here is more important information about the history of the commons and how it pertains to the issue of privatization of our environmental heritage. Bush supports the privatization of our water. The CATO Institute time line for full divestiture of Public Lands is 20 – 30 years. Here is a direct link to PERC.  PERC stands for Political Economy Research Center.  These folk believe that private interests make better stewards of our commonly held property. Link to the Review The Free Market Al-Qaeda.  This is a review of Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of our Common Wealth. Link to the webpage of Richard Behan who has another book called Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands. A link to the government site where the test case called Recreational Fee Demonstration Program.  And here is a critique of the program. 12:03:29 PM    talk to Baby! []

What Might the Map Look Like if Bush Co. gets his way?   Progress can be a good thing.  But the whole sale loss of so much public land would be a tragedy.  We can never regain any lands lost to corporate greed.   I am not saying that all corporations are greedy and would despoil the land that they get to exploit.  Many of these companies have good environmental records.  But once the land is gone from public ownership we have lost any chance of getting it back again.   There is a concept of gradualism going on I think.  First Bush changes the rules that the Bureau of Land Management uses to evaluate land for set aside.  Recreation goes to the back of the bus while mining, logging, and oil extraction move forward.  Once the land is stripped of its value in those areas will it have any residual value for recreation or wildlife?  And further, if it is returned to the public trust, how much of your taxes will be needed to correct any bad acts done by companies who have the protection of bankruptcy to cover their rear ends as they bank the gold and walk away?   Where I live we are dealing with the problems of mining left by the Bunker Hill Company.  We have heavy metals in our lakes that can never really be removed except by the forces of geologic time.   What is Bush Co.’s vision of the future of our country?  If he has one, is it one that you share?  It is a matter of values I think.  He places value on the bottom line.  He seems to feel that if something can not have a dollar value placed on it then it has no worth.   9:34:34 AM    talk to Baby! []

© Copyright 2003 Marie Foster.