Romney To Nevadans: I Don’t Know ‘What The Purpose Is’ Of Public Lands

[Emit]

Romney To Nevadans: I Don’t Know ‘What The Purpose Is’ Of Public Lands (Hint: They Pump $1 Billion Into the State Economy)

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney likes to sing about America the beautiful, but he mainly seems interested in mining it.

In an interview with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal last night, Mitt Romney expressed his ignorance of why the United States owns and manages approximately 80 percent of Nevada‘s land, most of it uninhabitable mountains and desert. In response to a question about whether he would sell public lands back to the state, Romney stated that that “I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land”:

...I don’t know why the government owns so much of this land.

So I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land, so I don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m about to hand it over.” But where government ownership of land is designed to satisfy, let’s say, the most extreme environmentalists, from keeping a population from developing their coal, their gold, their other resources for the benefit of the state, I would find that to be unacceptable.

Romney’s statement stands in stark contrast to the conservative tradition of knowing the value of protecting the lands that belong to all of us places for future generations. Teddy Roosevelt, the great Republican conservationist, once said, “Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.”

Public lands in Nevada – and other western states—actually provide an enormous economic boost and sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs. Indeed, recent Interior Department statistics show that federally managed public lands in Nevada provided over $1 billion in economic impacts and supported 13,311 jobs in 2010 (and this statistic doesn’t even include the economic impacts of Forest Service lands, managed by the Department of Agriculture). Recreation, energy and minerals, and grazing and timber all play a part in the economic effects that public lands provide to Nevada. ...

~snip~

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/03/418141/romney-public-lands/

[tabatha]

1. And he has the nerve to sing "America the Beautiful".

[edhopper]

2. It's were we send

the really poor people you don't care about.

[izquierdista]

3. A true idiot...

who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[Gregorian]

10. This sums up Republicans.

As I watch from the sidelines, I have been more and more aware of what Republicans are all about. Why they have been called the party of business.

Everything is in terms of money. Everything. And if there is no truth in the bible but this one thing, it is that the love of money is the root of all evil.

I could throw out so many examples. I own a timber ranch. I had a numb nut conservative tell me that I ought to "log it off and subdivide it". Anyone who has lived on the coast of Oregon can see the results of how money is worth more than trees. It's a personal thing for me. I've witnessed first hand what the love of money looks like.

Bla bla bla. You said it so well.

[Hepburn]

4. Dumber than a box of rocks.

Face -- palm!

[SunsetDreams]

5. Please don't insult a box of rocks

they are quite intelligent

[SunsetDreams]

6. K&R Why would he know what the purpose of public lands are?

He's only interested in taking over already formed corporations, and firing people.

[roguevalley]

7. that remark

Will not play well out west

[SunsetDreams]

9. No it sure won't,

he sure has a way of "stepping in it".

[CTyankee]

8. Keep taking that stupid pill every morning, Mitt!

Now he's gonna piss off all the outdoors men and women! Not to mention all the folks whose only affordable vacation is a week camping in a national park.

[jwirr]

18. He may be pissing off he farmers also. I think farmers still are allowed to have grazing rights to

public lands.

[WI_DEM]

11. The GOP will be nominating a money bags version of George W. Bush

[graywarrior]

12. His supporters are dumber than he is

[MichiganVote]

13. Simple. Its where we taxpayers can actually SEE what we are paying for

In place of what the we can't SEE when the wealthy shitbirds rip us off.

[Motown_Johnny]

14. the gaffe assembly line seems to have added a shift

I really thought he could go a couple days without one of these since Nevada, and every other contest in February, is in the bag for him.


Honestly, someone needs to shut him up and just let him rack up some wins.




Can we start the general election now? Please?

[dembotoz]

15. oh beautiful for toxic skies and amber waves of shopping malls

[Chuuku Davis]

16. Is he really as stupid as

He talks

[XemaSab]

17. Wow, major, major fail

Most of that land in Nevada is public land not because the environmentalists campaigned to make it public land, but because the people who originally settled the state went "meh" and nobody else wanted it.

For Romney to lump in BLM rangeland in Nevada with the Sierra National Forest or the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or Baxter State Park or Dry Tortugas National Park is like

[tabatha]

19. I thought of an answer.

Public lands are there so that everyone, not just the rich, can sing "America the beautiful".

[marmar]

20. He's just being honest....He and his ilk do not believe in the concept of 'The Commons'

They believe everything ought to be owned.