We wouldn't let Bush cut down the forests so he's selling them off

[bigtree]

Bush administration moves to sell $1 billion in public forestland

By Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, February 11, 2006 10:51 AM PST
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Friday detailed its proposal to sell more than 300,000 acres of national forests and other public land to help pay for rural schools in 41 states.

The land sales, ranging from less than an acre to more than 1,000 acres, could total more than $1 billion and would be the largest sale of forest land in decades.

Forest Service officials say the sales are needed to raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for schools and roads in rural counties hurt by logging cutbacks on federal land. The Bureau of Land Management has said it also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $250 million over five years.

Dave Alberswerth, a public lands expert with the The Wilderness Society environmental group called the plan a billion-dollar boondoggle to privatize treasured public lands to pay for “tax cuts to the rich.”

full article: http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2006/02/11/news/news1202112006.txt

[glitch]

1. We won't let him do that, either. nt

[Joanne98]

2. Reagan used to sell $50,000.00 redwood trees for $5.00 a ft

He sold them to the Japanese. I'm still waiting for an answer to why he sold them SOOOOOOO cheap (aprox. $230.00 per tree). That's quite a loss. I guess Reagan just HATED trees.

[porphyrian]

5. I believe Japan was covering our defecit back then...

...like China is doing now. That was probably just a way of paying them back or preventing them from cashing in before we were ready.

[Joanne98]

12. Thanx! I should have known it had something to do with the debt!

[phoebe]

3. Koch Industries just bought Georgia Pacific- Bush's sister married to Koch

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/11/328927.shtml

snip

BOB WILLIAMS
A project manager at the Center for Public Integrity, Williams is co-author
of the report "Koch's Low Profile Belies Political Power: Private Oil
Company Does Both Business and Politics With the Shades Drawn." Williams
said today: "Koch is a huge company -- bigger than Microsoft, but few people
have heard of it. It is very politically active, in campaign contributions,
lobbying and, probably most importantly, founding and funding right-leaning
libertarian think tanks. ... Both industries have
environmental challenges. Koch is very solicitous of its many friends in
Washington; and when it gets in an environmental bind, it is not shy about
calling on those friends in Washington."

The 2004 report noted: "Despite its size and political largess, Koch is able
to dodge the limelight because it is privately held, meaning that nearly all
of its business dealings are known primarily only by the company and the
Internal Revenue Service."

"Although it is both a top campaign contributor and spends millions on
direct lobbying, Koch's chief political influence tool is a web of
interconnected, right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups funded by
foundations controlled and supported by the two Koch brothers."

"Koch has had plenty of run-ins with government regulators and other legal
problems in recent years. Through it all, the company has shown a remarkable
knack for getting criminal charges dropped and huge potential penalties
knocked down."

"Koch has also shown a remarkable ability to get rid of or modify
environmental policies and other government rules it doesn't like."


more on the Koch brothers/think tanks here. Heard of the CATO Institute or Citizens for a Sound Economy?? Funded by Koch..

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_family's_charitable_foundations

[louis-t]

11. It just never ends, does it?

* family ties to corporate pigs.

[phoebe]

13. and I just found this, which really ticks me off..

http://www.democrats.com/node/7789
snip

The Rightwing Koch Brothers Fund the DLC
Submitted by Ted Kahl on February 9, 2006 - 10:44pm.Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) | Republicans & Conservatives | Tom DeLay

Do deep-pocketed "philanthropists" necessarily control the organizations they fund? That has certainly been the contention of those who truck in conspiracy theories about the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations funding liberal and neo-liberal organizations. As for the rightwing, journalists such as Joe Conason and Gene Lyons uncovered that the "vast right wing conspiracy" -- or the New Right network of think tanks, media outlets and pressure groups -- was marshalled under rightwing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife for his Get-Clinton campaign. Prior to the work of Conason and Lyons, Russ Bellant extensively documented in "The Coors Connection" how the Coors Family, Scaife and other wealthy rightwingers have funded the New Right movement since the early '70's. Among these rightwing benefactors are the Koch brothers. But the Kochs have been working both sides of the fence. As Bill Berkowitz writes, the Koch brothers have also been funding the Democratic Leadership Council.


According to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy, the brothers are "leading contributors to the Koch family foundations, which supports a network of Conservative organizations and think tanks, including Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Manhattan Institute the Heartland Institute, and the Democratic Leadership Council."

Charles Koch co-founded the Cato Institute in 1977, while David helped launch Citizens for a Sound Economy in 1986.


This is no less stunning than if Scaife or the Coors family were funding the DLC. So do the Kochs just throw money at the DLC -- as long as the Council supports a free-market" (i.e. unrestricted/unregulated corporate power) agenda that the Kochs generally agree with. Or is it more than just that -- does this really buttress what Greens and other disaffected liberals contend -- that the DNC has just become a party of "Republicrats", thanks especially to the DLC? They would say that corporate backers like the rightwing/libertarian Kochs have co-opted the Democratic establishment -- a hostile takeover of (what was once) the opposition.


A Washington Post interview with Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?", touches on this question.

In the concluding chapter of "Kansas," Frank assigns "a large part of the blame for the backlash phenomenon" to the "criminal stupidity" of the Democratic Party in abandoning its commitment to labor and economic justice in pursuit of white-collar votes and corporate contributions. The DLC in particular, he writes, thinks that "to collect the votes and -- more important -- the money of these coveted constituencies," Democrats must stand firm on issues like abortion rights while making "endless concessions on economic issues" such as NAFTA, welfare, privatization and deregulation. The result? Democrats become Tweedledum to the Republicans' Tweedledee on the laissez-faire economy, leaving their opponents free to woo blue-collar voters with backlash issues.

Earlier in the book, Frank takes his anti-DLC rhetoric to an even higher pitch. He notes that generous contributions from the Kansas oil billionaires who run Koch Industries have propped up numerous institutions that champion laissez-faire economics, from the Cato Institute to Citizens for a Sound Economy. And he includes the DLC on his list of Koch-funded "hothouses of the right."

"That's crazy," says Ed Kilgore, the DLC's policy director. "If you can't tell the difference between the DLC and the Republicans, you're not paying attention."

Sure, the DLC took some Koch money, Kilgore says. But it has never advocated abandoning the working class or taking economic issues off the table, and it is proud of Clinton's economic record. "If you have to be self-consciously and vocally anti-business in order to be considered a legitimate Democrat or progressive," he says -- well, sheesh: That would rule out the party's current presidential nominee.

Informed of this return fire, Frank seems uncharacteristically exasperated. But his fundamental stance remains: Bring 'em on.

Has the DLC taken economic issues off the table? "Of course they haven't taken them off the table -- they've just become Republicans."

Does a Democrat have to be anti-business? "I don't think I'd call myself anti-business. . . . I'm critical of the species of capitalism that we're living under today."

Is that Koch money innocent? "Okay, it is Koch that funds right-wing organizations. And it's the Democratic Leadership Council that's been working hard for years to push the Democratic Party to the right. Not to the left. To the right."

But isn't that where the American mainstream has been heading for decades? And hasn't he positioned himself way outside it?

Frank concedes this last point, but nothing more.

The Koch brothers also fund "Triad Management", which was at the center of a Republican money laundering scandal back in 1996. In fact, this was the very first Tom DeLay scandal -- and Koch money was present back then as well. For more on "Triad", here is a PBS report on the affair.

[FightingIrish]

4. Once those lands are in private hands there will be

wholesale clearcutting and no reforestation. I've mountain biked through private timber cuts in Oregon that just make you want to cry. The impact goes far beyond the ravaged parcels. Erosion, decimated habitat and the spread of invasive species are just a few of the ills from poorly managed timber land.

[CatholicEdHead]

6. Mineral/Water Rights below will also be up for sale

In a package deal or seperatly, but they will be sold for pennies on the dollar, probably with "Good Faith" reimbursement to the government.

[barb162]

7. How can he sell off what WE own? He doesn't own the forests

the bastard

[oppositionmember]

8. Teddy Roosevelt is spinning in his grave...

A Republican, but a more benign variety who relished war but had some humanity.

[CatholicEdHead]

10. Republicans of the time hated Teddy on many things

He would have been a real RINO of his time. He was a independent, yet very popularist President.

[LaPera]

9. That's our forest, we pay to maintain & enjoy, that Bush wants to sell at

bargain prices to big corporations, and where will that money Bush gets for our forest go?

Right back into BushCo industries, like Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon-Mobile, Carlyle Group, etc...All making a killing off BushCo's wars with our tax dollars as we go broke as a nation, and Bush & the republicans hate funding any social programs...So, the poor basically are forced to go off to war & die, while BushCo Industries makes a killing off the war and destruction...and continues to lie and keep the nation in fear and distraction. Distracting so they can continue to steal our forest & our resources that belong to us, the American people.

What an ugly, greedy, sick, republican ideology we live under -- A one party (republican) system of greed, lies and destrction!!!

[sandnsea]

14. They cut the county reimbursement program

They cut the program that made up for the reduction in logging, and now want to use their own cut as an excuse to sell forest land. I'm not terribly worried about this because when they try to sell a tract of land, the locals will totally freak out and stop it. Most likely it will just cause more blowback in the end.