Posted on 03/21/2002 5:50:51 AM PST by Issaquahking
Edited on 05/07/2004 7:33:59 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"Four legs bad...two legs good"
FMCDH!
If the price of imports reflected the attendant risks and the farmer were free to market, for a profit, the whole range of his (or her) goods including open space uses, scenery, watershed, endangered species, and pest management services, etc., I don't think using crude regulatory mechanics or civic trade restrictions would be necessary or desirable.
You may be a conservative, but I recommend you do some investigative research on The Nature Conservancy as to what a bunch of communists they are. This forum has ream's of truth in electronic storage - right here!Carry_Okie's book is also a good place to start. Find out how bad "The Green Machine really is! Pick up a copy of "Set Up and Sold Out" by Holly Swanson. When you wake up to what's going on here in America....it will set you spinning.
Sir, this isn't ranching. It's a cattle drive!
My book is more about how the environmental movement is doing significant harm to the environment and why. It provides technical analysis demonstrating the accuracy of its assertions backed by hard data from original sources. It discusses motives and philosophies and proposes workable solutions.
Let's say the Matador ranch wanted to do what you say and market all these things. How could they have...say...made a profit selling their pastoral view to the passing tourists? IOW, how could your ideas be implemented without more government taxation?
(I'm playing straight man, not adversary here)
John, you must've struck a raw nerve with Carry_Okie particulary since he was probably already stressed out with the project he was (is?) working on.
I don't know if you have had a chance to check out any more info on the Nature Conservancy and all the land-grabbing that's been going on, but I have a few more places I'd like to direct you to in your search.
I learned a lot from a website called the Property Rights Foundation of America, Inc. ( prfamerica.org ). Please see http://www.prfamerica.org/NYsNaturalHeritageProgram.html. It states that the Nature Conservancy is the largest environmental organization in the United States, with 1994 assets of just over one billion dollars. In that year, "TNC received $237,779,000 from sales of land to government, while expending [only!]$76,046,000 for this purpose." The rest of the article goes on to explain how TNC and the State of New York compile secret lists of "endangered species" on government and private land, and the only way you can find out about it is if you apply for a building permit. You cannot find out about it prior to buying the property in the first place. I suspect this goes on in other states as well.
Another scary example of collusion between government and the TNC is the "memo of understanding" [I wish someone could take this particular type of tyranny to the Supreme Court, although I'm waiting to see if these folks, some of whom had a private meeting with Kofi Annan, are in collusion as well] signed (W's name was mentioned) between TNC and the US Forest Service. See if you can find it on the prfamerica.org site. (A link is on their home page today) This agreement allows TNC the responsibility for "controlled burns" of FS lands. I've heard that a "controlled burn" was the cause of the fires at Los Alamos that devastated private owners as well. The purpose of these burns is ostensibly to preserve or restore grasslands (such as in this article) and "biodiversity" , and to destroy "invasive species". Unfortunately for us, we humans are considered by the environazis as THE most invasive species. You could spend a few hours at the prfamerica site and get a pretty good understanding of what the so-called "environmental" movement is about.
An article by Henry Lamb (another foremost property rights advocate) explains further the long reach of TNC, the direct funding by US tax dollars, indirect US funding through the UN, and direct funding by US (and State) government purchase. According to Henry TNC, World Wildlife Fund (founded by Prince Phillip who once said he would like to come back as a virus so as to kill off a bunch of us), IUCN (a book could be written about this group as well), Greenpeace, and the World Resources Institute (this one I don't know much about - I'm afraid to look) "received grants [from the UN] totaling $808,537,000 as reported in the June 30, 1999 'Operational Report on Global Environment Facility Programs.'...The Unites States contributes substantially to the Global Environment Facility....Environmentalism is a multi-billion dollar business, led by giant not-for-profit corporations [they do not pay taxes!!!] whose offices and executive salaries dwarf those of struggling, for-profit corporations that are often the targets of environmentalism....The Nature Conservancy, whose assets exceed a billion dollars, is known primarily for 'protecting' land by direct acquisition, or the purchase of 'conservation easements' or development rights.' It also serves as a real estate agent for the federal government, reselling many of its acquisitions to federal agencies for tidy profits." Everyone should take the time to read this article NGO's Leading the Parade http://wnd.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25191.
Another place to see the big picture that is planned for this country [and the rest of the world, I might add] is to go to this site and follow all the links: www.wildlandsprojectrevealed.org. It will expose you to the Wildlands Project. That will prepare you for the official website of the Wildlands Project www.twp.org. You will see the former website is not lying.
You might wonder why this is happening. Some of us here believe the US is bankrupt and has been for some time, government debt ranging anywhere from $14 trillion to around $40 trillion. A lot of this debt is held by foreign entities some of us call international banksters. All the property in this country has been mortgaged many times over by the federal government, and Americans are merely chattel, "human resources" to be exploited as long as we are productive. That is where the fascist plan known as the Workforce Investment Act or School-to-Work comes in. When we are no longer productive [and from what I've read, I'm convinced that they plan for us to produce until we die], we will be given over to a controlled "health care" system where we will be allowed to die. Once you understand this, it is a whole lot easier to understand everything else that goes on in this country.
I don't know what the solution is and I sincerely wonder if there is time to effect one favorable to the American people, but if there is any hope at all, people HAVE to be educated about what is going on, we must insist that our tax dollars are not extorted from us in order to transfer them to people bent on our destruction, and these so-called "environmental" groups need to start paying taxes on their vast holdings just like the rest of us. The loss of tax revenue on THEIR lands [not that I am in favor of the insidious property tax, but that's another issue] forces up the costs (taxes) on the rest of us, forcing more of us into the "willing seller" category; and this, of course, is the plan.
From the Preface:
The final straw was the constant battle being waged by the County of Santa Cruz over timber harvesting rules. I had heard the cries about the crisis of rapacious timber harvesting, investigated the claims, and found them lacking. I had expected competence and energy among the activists. Instead, I found them flabby, self-satisfied, and arrogant; trading in acculturated opinions as if they were proven facts. What was even more disturbing was how they showed so little interest in controlling the spread of exotic weeds or reducing the risk of catastrophic fire. I earned a bitter introduction to the consensus process, drafting the United Nations Local Agenda 21, a process all about power, money, and emotions, not the environment. That did it. I finished my projects, quit my job, and started to write.John, if it seemed like I was pissed at you, I am sorry. It's just that I know you are a well meaning fellow who honestly feels that it is a responsibility to act to protect natural resources. There is nothing wrong with that as far as it goes. However, what I have identified is how that desire, acting through civic coercion, disinvests the very things we love, it is a horribly destructive path in the name of misguided altruism and the primary cause of what I see as TRUE and impending environmental disasters, largely induced by the environmental movement.You dont wake up in the morning wanting to write something like this. It isnt that it is a lot of work, or two (now three) years of your life without pay. It is the concern that you may not have the time and money to get it done, or that it might be too late. There is no pleasure to be found articulating the appalling consequences of pervasive injustice, corruption, and ignorance. There is legitimate personal concern for capricious distortion or reprisal against my family. There certainly isnt the expectation of making a lot of money. There is simply a lot at stake here.
That any government cannot directly manage an economy is obvious. Yet this nation has fallen to the notion that government should have a monopoly to manage something as complex as an ecosystem, with policies subordinated to political prejudice instead of technical judgement.
The environmental movement was born out of legitimate goals. There was greed and shortsightedness on the part of resource industries. I have expe-rienced it first-hand. It was appropriate to go to government to get problems addressed. Much of the work that was done was necessary and successful and that is part of the problem with it.
The primary role of government has turned from forcing rapid economic growth to the exclusion of all else, to an obsession with constraining people from anything that can be construed as harmful. It is certainly not encour-aging anybody to do good. It is a politics born out of the paradigm that people are fundamentally incapable of harmonious interaction with each other or the planet. That misanthropic notion has been rolled into a quasi-religious set of beliefs that is being used by those with every intent of mo-tivating the body politic to trade away its most precious freedoms out of unreasoned fear. Now that environmentalists and regulators are in power, we have greed and shortsightedness on their part. It must be stopped before we lose all that is dear.
I dont say this lightly. To these same organizations, I owe many of the pleasures of my youth for having preserved those places that taught me much of my first love for the land, but these are not the same people and they do not share the same purpose. This book is, in part, a response to the sense of having that love betrayed.
As environmental organizations have grown, their common agenda has diverged from its purpose. Their adherents principle goal has devolved to pursuit of funding to support a political and legal agenda. They have ignored scientific evidence and overridden legitimate discourse over technical differences in the name of preserving entrenched bureaucracies and political power groups feeding off taxes, grants, and lawsuits. It has even led to an odd form of corporate welfare: membership in an oligopoly in return for selling out or buying up smaller competitors. The consequences have compounded. Ruined lives have been rendered into political cannon fodder. In the conduct of battle, the environment has been subordinated to the status of a political hostage. Much like a child in a custody case, the object of the dispute is the one that suffers. The worst of it is, it does not have to be this way.
When one begins a process like this, it starts as a polemic, for much of what starts you writing is a sense of what's wrong. This book takes to task environmental activists, all levels of government, universities, developers, irresponsible loggers, lawyers, rural/suburban residents, bankers, the urban public, politicians, insurance companies, and more! Each of us is a user of the environment and anyone who would buy this book and read it shares such a love of nature and an investment in how we got here. Maybe we have to see the egg on our faces before we can work with those with whom we have struggled for so long. At least we all have something in common!
Perhaps for some it is enough to simply state an injustice, but love of the land won't let you get away with just that and will lead you to wonder what might be done instead. The polemic took nine months. Taking the answers from the abstract, to the concrete, and then to the elegant took far longer. I have done my best to make them simple. I ask your forgiveness for anything less, but this book had to get out. It is time.
One last thing, just to make it clear. This book was written without financial support from any person, corporate or individual. It was paid for with savings and personal debt. I was provided data from numerous sources from all sides of the arguments. There is no motive other than the reward of having helped people do a better job for nature and to find a way out of the injustices they rightly perceive. It is possible to prosper in harmony with the laws of nature once we begin to act in concert with all of them. Best that we start to learn.
No matter how intelligent people are, how much experience they have, or how much they care, we all have major degrees of ignorance when it comes to understanding our interactions with the environment. I have done my best, within my limitations, to make it honest.
Yeah, I know, it's a pretty strong charge. If you truly read the book (and it is no alarmist polemic), you will see what I am talking about. Perhaps you might want to chew on the first chapter.
One cannot confront the origins of the environmental movement, its ideological sources, and the origins of the UN without seeing a grand sweep of history incorporating at least 6,000 years. It is awesome.
Writing this book also led me to finally understand the power of the 10th Commandment. It is God's only Law that addresses the motivational workings of the heart as it acts through the mind in social discourse.
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