Washington/Politics/Policy Archives
On the letters page of the Anchorage Daily News, you can learn more about environmental politics than you can reading -- well, anything I write in the LA Weekly, for sure, but probably better things, too (I don't want to dis any one magazine). I read the letters regularly, because they end up in my news aggregators which ask for certain terms ("timber harvest" is one).
I found this one especially instructive, in light of the heavy federal subsidies Alaskans enjoy (California, by contrast, is a "donor state.") I especially liked the very last line. Because it's true.
Alaska's Republican Rep. Don Young is livid since Congress voted against funding Forest Service roads on the Tongass National Forest. He is threatening reprisals right and left ("Young promises reprisal for vote," May 19). Rep. Young supports most logging not in his own backyard, but he drew the line when it came to salvage logging on the Chugak National Forest.
Rep. Young strongly supports funding for a Tongass timber program that took in $400,000 in revenue last year but spent either $20 million or over $40 million, depending on whose numbers you use. The higher figure equals $150,000 for every Tongass timber job and is in fact a subsidy. He justifies this as "building for the future." So much for his sanctimonious lip service to fiscal conservatism; it's just taxpayers' money after all and those corporate donors really need the subsidies.
The Tongass timber industry has been in decline for over a decade. Rep. Young blames "extreme environmentalists" who have questioned this insanity for years. But Tongass logging is uneconomical, even subsidized and at today's inflated lumber costs. Environmentalists are merely convenient scapegoats.Isn't it ironic that those "extreme environmentalists" are the real fiscal conservatives?
-- Erik Lie-Nielsen
Juneau
By the way, who knew May 11 was "Endangered Species Day"? And that the red-headed woodpecker is about to be listed? Not me.
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We don't know that Vice President Dick Cheney wasn't shooting at feckless little quail raised in a pen and fed by humans when he "peppered," or, rather "sprayed," his lawyer friend with pellets from his 28-gauge shotgun. But we do know that he's been on a canned hunt before: In December of 2003, he and his buddies went after 500 ring-necked pheasants released at a Pennsylvania Country Club for their shooting pleasure and downed 417 of them (what happened, I wonder, to the remaining 83? How do you get over a day like that?). Cheney's score that day: 70 birds, 0 lawyers.
So I offer up this video from the Humane Society of the United States so you can experience just how challenging and sportsmanlike the practice is.
And don't cry when you watch that big ram go down with six arrows and a gunshot wound, you sissies. Just pretend he's a Texas lawyer. Evidently their kind don't go down easily.
I'd go easier on the VP if he went easier on national parks, endangered species or even Patrick Leahy. But failing to see in him a minute's worth of interest in public service in the three decades he's been playing at it, I consider him fair game. For ridicule, I mean.
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Blog or not, I could not bear to watch. But Think Progress (ht: Gristmill) has done some thrilling fact-checking and contextualizing. Leave here. Go there.
UPDATE: More specifically, check out what ThinkProgress has dug up on Bush's biofuel rhetoric versus his actions, and his lies about supporting renewable energy.
And this is a clip to cheer the Bush-weary heart.
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EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley -- the same EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley who just a year ago took the EPA to task for calibrating mercury emissions standards to the Bush administration and industry's liking -- resigned today.
"As I conclude nearly 35 years of public service, I hope I have successfully demonstrated that career civil servants can provide you and future Presidents an excellent pool of candidates for Inspectors General positions due to our experience in government and the non-partisan nature of the positions. Unfortunately, I fear the pay inequities that were created with the implementation of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2004 will make it increasingly difficult to convince career employees to accept IG appointments in the future. I hope your Administration will work with Congress to address this issue and to encourage qualified career employees to serve as Inspectors General in the future."
The whole letter (as a downloadable PDF) is here
And a great profile by Dale Russakoff of the Washington Post is here:
"We are not just about following rules," said Tinsley, the EPA's inspector general since 1999. "We want to know if the rules make sense."Tinsley recently has issued investigative reports concluding that a number of them do not. In late September, for example, she reported that a rule promulgated by the EPA "has seriously hampered" clean-air litigation against electric utilities by scaling back a requirement that polluters install emissions controls when adding to their facilities.
The same day, even as EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt was on the campaign trail for President Bush, touting the nation's air as "the cleanest most Americans have ever breathed," another IG report found that smog levels in major metropolitan areas had remained the same or gotten worse, making the air unhealthful
Tinsley is the second Inspector General to resign this week, after Department of Transportation IG Kenneth Mead on Monday.
UPDATE: If you want to understand the OIG/EPA conflict over mercury standards in more detail -- and the historical background of those standards -- check out Jeff Johnson's "Long Time Cutting" from Chemical and Engineering News.
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