FIRES BY UNCLE SAM

New York Post ^ | 6/29/02

[kattracks]

June 29, 2002 -- The vast disastrous fires roaring across the Southwest are not simple acts of God. Nor can the scale of the destruction be blamed on careless campers.

Fires, in nature, make for healthy forests. But these blazes are mostly the result of bad forest management - exacerbated by environmentalist foolishness.

[exnavy]

I sure hope John Q. Public is paying attention to these reports. The enviro-whackos money supply is drying up hopefully.

[upchuck]

America's national forests are clogged with massive amounts of dry fuel. Why? Partly because authorities used to be too quick to extinguish small natural fires...

It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature!

Enviroidiots!!

[backhoe]

Rats! I just got finished with sending another mass email, and updating the DUBOB 9 file-- and here's another story begging to be included!

katt, this "issue" promises to be as Nuclear as the "pledge issue."

Nothing drives home the insanity of the last 8-9 years of forest mismanagement like wildfires. Any fool can tell that whatever damage is done by cutting firebreaks is inconsequential compared to an uncontrolled burn.

[johnny7]

Rush commented on this during the week.

Seems that ex-Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, stated that houses and all buildings should be required to be more fire-retardent in these areas.

What an a-hole! More government regulation that puts the blame on the citizen and takes more money from from his/her wallet.

Let free-enterprise do the job, not some friggin' bureaucrat in Washington.

Open these areas to monitored thinning in exchange for the lumber companies to bulldoze firebreaks around the perimeters of said areas.

Government couldn't pee on a boot with instructions written on the heel!

[Tijeras_Slim]

Not to mention STARTING THE FIRES:
Los Alamos 2000, Roy Weaver, Park Superintendent.
Denver 2002, Forest Service employee.
Ruidoso and Mescalero Lands 2002, Paul Valdez Spotted Owl Census Taker (I kid you not)
And I bet a bunch more that have never been proven.

[crz]

There once was a man name Babbit,
Starting fires became his main habbit,
Arsons his name,
It became is middle name,
When caught, he ran and hid like a rabbit.

[backhoe]

We have just been handed three God-given opportunities to hammer the Left in this country until they ring like a cheap bell:

1- the "pledge issue." It went Nuclear-Hot so fast it was unbelievable, and while the Left is moving fast to defuse it, it has done a lot of damage.
2- the "wildfires issue." Every living thing fears wildfire, and it perfectly illustrates years of muddle-headed mismanagement.
3- the "waste, fraud, and abuse issue." The Left is desperately trying to draw attention away by using the "WorldCom" and other corporate abuses and fraud, but the Government is the real heavy hitter in this department. They can't even account for their own ( our! ) money!

[jokar]

Government couldn't pee on a boot with instructions written on the heel!

I believe this is pour pee out of a boot with the directions on the bottom. Which is worse shape then even you had imagined.

[nicmarlo]

Before the Clinton administration severely limited timber sales, selective logging helped keep forests healthy, while the profits from it enabled the Forest Service to cart off the dead wood and other hot-burning tinder that feeds uncontrollable wildfires.

Chalk up another idiotic policy to the Klintoon administration. There should be a verified list linking Klintoon's idiotic policies with all the deadly/destructive consequences..........and then get it into the hands of journalists and others, who would be able to print it and add to it.

[VOA]

There once was a man name Babbit,
snip...
When caught, he ran and hid like a rabbit.

Last I heard about six months ago, Babbitt was a mouthpiece (lobbyist) for
a commercial group seeking to turn some pristine California coastline into
a hughmongous housing project.

It was pleasant to see The Los Angeles Times giving a Babbitt update, but
confused about whether to praise or punish their fellow traveler.

[aristeides]

Would the federal government have any civil liability for these fires? I wonder if the agency policies on forest maintenance could be deemed arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.

[Carry_Okie]

Good questions. One thing in the way is EO-12986 which exempted the IUCN from civil liability (it also exempts most environmental NGOs BTW). Under Clinton, most federal resource agencies were members of the IUCN (to be the UN's EPA). Bush has made a commitment that such agencies would allow those memberships to lapse, but I do not know that current status. Either way, the EO should have been rescinded by now and to my knowledge is has not.

I also note that New Mexico passed SB-1 a year or so ago, which placed the State in under declared a state of emergency because of manner in which the USFS has allowed the fuel load to accrue. The statute has since been mired in litigation (of course) but it does have an interesting feature. As I understand it (and I'm a little shaky on this), the state of emergency means that the national government can no longer claim that the destruction of property value was due to an Act of God. I have been told that it opens them to claims for punative damages. Now THAT would be interesting. I will learn a lot more when I go to New Mexico on a speaking tour in August (NM, UT, AZ, NV... anybody interested?).

Finally, there are provisions in the Civil Service Code for suing the employees. I am not an expert on that matter either, but a class action against a block of them (such as FSEEE) or the USFS legal staff for folding in these sweetheart suits would also be very interesting.

[dirtboy]

What an a-hole! More government regulation that puts the blame on the citizen and takes more money from from his/her wallet.

Not entirely true. Folks who live (or perhaps LIVED) in the vicinity of the recent Arizona fires protested a proposed controlled burn last year. A big part of the problem is that so many homes have been built in all those pretty Ponderosa forests - and then they are just as aghast when the forest burns (and demanding federal aid) as those who build in the floodplain and then are shocked, SHOCKED! when the floodplain up and floods on them.

The massive increase of homes build in fire-prone forests out west has significantly changed the dynamic - for eighty years, the forest service mismanged, then the homes were built, and it created a politically impossible situation - but nature really doesn't give a whit about politics.

[Red Jones]

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