Roadless fight...Bush Adminstration sued

[BuzzH]

Montana, Maine enter into lawsuit in roadless fight

Montana and Maine have joined a lawsuit by four other states against the Bush administration's suspension of the 2001 Roadless Rule, which banned development in about one-third of national forest land.

On Feb. 24, the attorneys general of Montana and Maine filed briefs supporting California, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington, which want courts to declare Bush's May repeal of the Roadless Rule illegal.

President Clinton passed the -Roadless Rule in 2001 after environmental study and two years of public hearings, during which 96 percent of 1.6 million comments favored protecting the areas.

The lawsuit accuses the Bush administration of repealing the rule without public input and with so little environmental study that the repeal violates the National Environmental Protection Act.

Mike McGrath, Montana's attorney general, said roadless areas are a primary source of clean water. He said Montana's five-week big-game hunting season depends extensively on habitat security provided by -roadless areas.

 

[Ithaca 37]

Good. Even the dumbest Dubya fans should have realized by now they made a big mistake voting for him.

 

[Bambistew]

yep and all those people who voted for Kerry were 'smart'... To bad they didn't move to Canada like they said they would if Bush won! Where your bags packed IT?

 

[mtmiller]

Ivan, if Bush was allowed a third term, would you vote for him?

 

[Elkhunter]

Groups endorse roadless petition

By Rebecca Huntington
Jackson Hole Daily

Wyoming conservationists have signed a petition calling on the Bush administration to reinstate a rule that would prohibit road-building in roadless areas in national forests.


The road-building ban would protect valuable wildlife habitat and save taxpayer money by not adding to the Forest Service’s maintenance backlog, said Liz Howell, director of the Wyoming Wilderness Association.


Already, 12,000 miles of roads crisscross national forests in the state, she said.


“We’ve got some great wild places, but if we keep chipping away, we won’t,” Howell said Monday.


In the petition filed Thursday, backers argue that the Bush administration ig-nored strong public support for the road-building ban and skirted federal environmental law when revoking it. More-over, the groups argue that lifting the ban would lead to more logging, drilling and other development of public lands.


The Wyoming Wilderness Association, Wyoming Outdoor Council and Biodiversity Con-servation Alliance joined the petition, which boasts the signatures of 250,000 citizens, according to backers. The petition is filed under the federal Administrative Procedures Act, which grants citizens the right to request the government issue, amend or revoke federal rules.

The Bush administration repealed the roadless protections and instituted a new rule last year to allow state governors to petition for some roadless protections instead. Even after governors petition for protection, however, the federal government retains authority to reject such requests.


The states of California, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington have objected to the Bush rule and joined a lawsuit to reinstate the 2001 roadless protections. Montana and Maine filed a brief in support of the suit two weeks ago. Twenty conservation groups also filed a similar legal challenge.


Some motorized recreation groups, however, have objected to the roadless rule and lawsuits to reinstate it for fear that such a ban could limit motorized access to national forests.


“Contrary to their title, many of these ‘roadless’ lands have well-established routes, which the public has long used to gain access to treasured destinations on our public lands,” said Paul Turcke, an Idaho attorney representing the BlueRibbon Coalition and other motorized-use groups hoping to intervene in the case. The 2001 Clinton roadless rule also faced a court battle and was thrown out by a Wyoming court, Turcke said.


Howell said her group is not trying to close existing routes but wants to prevent new roads from fragmenting wildlife habitat. Remaining roadless areas in Wyoming provide protective cover for animals, clean streams for fish and recreational opportunities for people, she said. In contrast, designated wilderness areas in the state tend to encompass high elevation “rock and ice,” she said.


“Wilderness doesn’t provide great wildlife habitat year-round, but roadless areas do,” she said. “The rule provides a real common sense solution to protecting these areas.”


In addition, two U.S. senators from Washington and New Mexico plan to introduce a bill in Congress to reinstate the 2001 roadless rule. Last July, 145 members of Congress introduced a similar bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.

 

[Ithaca 37]

Bambi, I voted for Ralph Nader. Read this:

Who Is The Traitor...
Us Or Ralph Nader?
Thank you, Ralph Nader.
An Unreasonable Man takes us into the Ralph Nader story, from birth to last week. And it is, like The Fog of War and Robert McNamara, one of those opportunities to step back, take a breath, and remember the seething power of recent history.
As in Errol Morris' doc, the film has to account for a parade of people who want to string the central figure up these days. And even though it comes late in the film, I will address it first here, because it really speaks to the whole movie... and for me, it very much speaks for the current battle between old and new media.
What is most fascinating about the battle over the two Nader presidential runs is that Nader's initiating proposition is that the two parties have become very much like the big businesses he has spent a lifetime trying to force to play by the rules, and that the response of the parties and of many prominent Democrats has been almost exactly like the response of those corporations. Arrogance. Abusiveness. Misleading Information. Self Delusion.
The filmmakers, who are definitely pro-Ralph, lay it out simply and then with increasing complexity. The first fact is that in what became the key swing state in the 2000 election, Florida, at least half a dozen candidates had enough votes to turn the count. Nader had the most. But any one of the non-2-party candidates could have turned the election. So why all the Nader rage?
Another myth busted by the doc is that Nader promised not to campaign in battleground states and broke that promise, swinging the election. An Ivy League professor, who self-identifies himself as a lifelong Democrat, actually looked at Nader's schedule and found the accusation that Nader targeted Gore in battleground states to be groundless. As both the professor and Nader point out, Nader spend the vast majority of his last campaign months in uncontested states.
But still, Nader has been attacked, harassed, threatened, and endlessly mocked for staying in the 2000 election until the end. Left-wing lunatics (yes, there are tied and suited nutcases on both sides), also well represented in the documentary, argue that Nader was more responsible for Gore's defeat than was Gore's inability to carry his home, Tennessee, or Clinton's home, Arkansas, which would have swung the election for Gore and made Florida irrelevant.
The Democrats' inability to accept that the election was lost, rather than stolen or crushed by Nader's 5 percent ends up explaining a lot about 2004 as well. Nader brings up a discussion with John Kerry about finding three issues that they could share and which Bush could not counter so they could deliver a somehow united front. These were issues with which Kerry agreed. Still, no deal.

The issue of bureaucratic arrogance continues to the presidential debate. Not only was Nader disallowed from debating, but he was thrown off the University property, even though he had a ticket to watch the debate in an adjacent hall on video feed. Who issued that order? The Committee on Presidential Debates... a private organization run by two formers heads of the DNC and RNC. Even though a journalist hosts, the affair is run not by a public interest group, but by the two parties, whose interests are the only ones served.
Of course, acolytes who pretend to be open minded, like Michael Moore and Bill Maher, just play it out the way the Democratic Party has positioned it all. Ralph Nader is a kook. Just the way GM would have had it. Just the way food companies that liked to produce food without ingredients would have it. Just the way auto makers who didn't want to deal with airbags or seatbelts would have it. And on and on and on. Ralph Nader is associated closely with over 200 pieces of important safety legislation.
And now, because of 2000, even the interest groups he founded decades ago are abandoning him.
Who exactly disagrees with his actions... aside from Gore losing? And isn't changing the rules of the game to prioritize the outcome you prefer the stuff of fascists and dictators, not Americans?
This speaks to another beauty about Nader that I admire. He truly believes in the principles of our society. He doesn't think we have achieved the best version of those principles. But his fight is to reach that place. His fight is out of love for those principles. His relentlessness, his tirelessness, his self-denial of a wife and a family... all to fight for something that we, as Americans, were meant to be, at least on paper, for lo these last 230 years.
My sense of the man was shady until yesterday. I looked backward to his achievements, many of them nearly as old as I am. But a man still fighting the fight on principle and not allowing himself to be distracted by opportunity or attack, the machine or the anarchist, comfort or distress.
I am no Ralph Nader. I am not that focused. I am not that strong. But I do admire the vision. I do identify with the endless fight to bring legitimacy to a new medium that competes more than effectively with the old media... and which often slips below old media as well. The fight for standards and the fight to strive to be the best is brutal. And I feel the slings and arrows of those who see the future coming and rage against it.
Thanks to Ralph Nader, I feel emboldened and, actually, proud of being subject to those attacks today. Nader and the filmmakers who really did a great job here (though it really is a TV doc) gave me sustenance for the road all unreasonable men must travel. They have reminded me that the road must be traveled without malice, without pettiness, and without the comforts that always seem to be on the other side of the shiny window.
I thank them for that. And I pray that there is another Ralph Nader out there, just waiting to fight the fight, to love the framework he so believes in that he will give his life to it, to be right, to be wrong, but to be strong in a way so few of us are these days. Our lives have become so easy compared to the past. Easy, in great part, because of Ralph Nader.

http://www.moviecitynews.com/festivals/sundance_2006/dp_060127.html

 

[Bambistew]

Not a chance! I had reservations about it last time... IMO I really dind't have a choice.

If the Dems could come up with a canadate thats not so far to the left they would stand a chance. Each day this contry gets divided further and further.

I'm thinking about voting Dem next time just to help fix all the crap thats been hosed up in the last 5 years. At least get some ballance back into the system.

Did you vote for Bush, MT? Or the guy who belly crawled to get into range of a deer just before he took him with his double barrel 12ga? I just couldn't do it... I thought pretty long and hard about it, but coudn't vote for a guy that is in bed with the largest anti hunting organization in the US... Bush on the otherhand has turned into the largest Anti hunting Org in the US... So it was a loose loose situation in the end. The best we could hope for is that Cheny and Bush go quail hunting and both take slugs...

To be honest I'm so discuted with this country and it polotics I'm thinking about moving to Canada myself.

 

[Tom]

Watershed protection seems like a better argument than protecting wildlife from easy hunter access. What's the data on that, no roads and watershed vs roads and watershed? Can roads and watershed co-exist?

 

[Bambistew]

The problem I had with voting for Nader was my vote would have been wasted...

The last election was about who should not win rather than who was the right man for the job. Neither one was qualified and we all lost.

The best thing that could happen to this country would be for DC to become a crater and we start over fresh. (Note: I would hope for this to happen when my wife and I were on vaction, as I live a touch to close to the above mentioned crater.)

 

[BigHornRam]

"To be honest I'm so discuted with this country and it polotics I'm thinking about moving to Canada myself"

Me too Bambi. Yukon is looking better and better each day.

 

[Bambistew]

BHR... I was thinking BC... more 'oppurtunity' for hunting, plus not quite as cold.

BTW, I think I'm giving moosie a run for the money when it comes to spelling, eh?

 

[BigHornRam]

New words by Bambi and there definitions.

discuted: to no longer be cute

polotics: uncontroled twitching, talking, and mannerisms while playing polo

Bambi, you still spell better than I do for the most part! Couple more years of global warming and the Yukon will be a tropical paradise.

 

[MarvB]

Bambi-

I'm thinking about voting Dem next time just to help fix all the crap that’s been hosed up in the last 5 years. At least get some balance back into the system.

...not to say my vote is penned in one party or another (my chad's still hangin' thank you very much) but just how/where does this guarantee any balance back in the future

Oh, and tell Paul if he's gonna give you chit about your spelling that "there definitions" should be "their definitions"