You worry me. I wish you didn’t. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don’t blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can’t help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don’t fully understand their grievances and hate but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.
On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children’s mothers.
So I notice you now. I don’t want to be worried. I don’t want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab /Muslim terrorist.
How do I differentiate between the true Arab-Muslim Americans and the Arab-Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter those very same good neighbors and children? The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of it’s religions, with ALL of it’s different citizens, with all of it’s faults. It is time for every Arab-Muslim in this country to determine it for me.
I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know whether or not you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to it’s flag? Do you proudly display in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it?
Or do you pray that Allah with destroy it in one of your “Jihads”? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America? If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it.
Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America. Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. And no more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy…I am only interested in action. What will you do for America — our great country — at this time of crisis, at this time of war?
I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting “Allah Bless America”. I want to see young Arab-Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.
The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, now!
But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals.
The very few Arab-Muslim representatives that have appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States prove who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing “leaders” like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat. If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true when your “leaders” are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance.
It matters little how good Islam should be if large numbers of the world’s Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members defended Johnny Cochran and O. J. Simpson after the latter butchered his wife and murdered an innocent friend. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.
Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore?
Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we drink wine with dinner, or celebrate Christmas? Do you and you fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY civilized democratic nation in the entire middle-east? And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here?
Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us? If so, I want you to leave. I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE!
We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion. We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world.
I want to know where every Arab-Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand.”
Until then … you worry me.
Ethanol is a commercially proven renewable bio-fuel which is used as an additive to gasoline, either as an oxygenate additive as mandated by federal or state “clean air” programs, or as an octane enhancer or gasoline substitute. It is refreshing to know that fuel choice is on the horizon and it is in our grasp to write an obituary for foreign oil.
Ethanol is not a new fuel, in 1826; Samuel Morey developed an engine that ran on ethanol and turpentine. Ethanol is typically sold in gasoline blends of E-10 (10% ethanol) and E-20 (20% ethanol) for which no engine modifications are required. Ethanol is also being used more regularly in flexible fuel vehicles (FFV’s). The FFV is designed to run on unleaded gasoline and ethanol in any mixture. The engine and fuel system in a flex-fuel vehicle must be adapted slightly to run on alcohol fuels because they are corrosive. They require a special sensor in the fuel line to analyze the fuel mixture and control the fuel injection and timing to adjust for different fuel compositions. , E-85 (85% ethanol) is a blend of 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline and is the preferred fuel for the FFV’s.
Detroit is increasing production of FFV’s to meet the demand for those aspiring to switch to this bio-fuel and several models already are on the market. FFV’s are not a new idea Henry Ford produced the Model T as a flexible-fuel vehicle that could run on ethanol, gasoline or a combination of the two.
Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton introduced the Ethanol Vehicle Awareness amendment to the highway bill earlier this year, which requires all automakers to display labels inside the gas tank covers and on windshields of vehicles that have the ability to run on E-85 fuel, beginning with the model year 2007. “The amendment was unanimously approved by the full Senate May 12 and will help remind consumers that they have the option to buy E-85 fuel,” Dayton also co-sponsored an amendment to the Senate’s highway bill to provide a tax credit of up to $30,000 for gas stations that install or convert pumps to offer E-85 fuel. “Ethanol gasoline is still not available in many regions of the country,” Dayton said. “This tax incentive would help to promote E-85 use nation-wide.”
Farmers and industry officials say efforts to promote E-85 fuel are paying off. Wimbledon North Dakota corn farmer Mike Clemens says, “a year ago nobody was even talking about E-85”.
E-85 is gaining popularity in eastern Wyoming and hopefully its availability will spread westward. The Torrington Terminal in Torrington and Quealy Dome Sinclair west of Laramie, both sell E-85. Ronnie Hill, who is involved in both stations, sees a bright future. He hopes to add several more E-85 outlets in the coming year. Given our dependence on foreign oil, “we need to wake up as a nation and have more flexible types of energy,” Hill said. Hill buys his ethanol from Wyoming Ethanol who’s distillery is in Torrington Wyoming. E-85 is selling for $1.57 per Gallon; straight unleaded regular costs $2.10. E-85 is cheaper but you can’t go as far on a gallon.
On the outskirts of Torrington Wyoming, Wyoming Ethanol last year produced 5.3 million gallons of the fuel. A $14-million expansion that’s now underway will double production capacity, said Dan Schwartzkopf, senior vice president of Wyoming Ethanol’s parent company Renova Energy. Renova is also acquiring a plant in Hayburn, Idaho.
Schwartzkopf said Renova Energy has a five-year plan to increase its ethanol production to 50 million gallons annually. Renova expects to build at least two more plants in the 15-million- to 20-million-gallon production range.
Given the outlook for oil production, or lack thereof in the years ahead, Schwartzkopf thinks ethanol has turned a corner in terms of public acceptance. Recently President Bush turned up in a biodiesel plant, praising the merits of alternative fuels. “Whoever thought you’d hear that oil guy talking like that,” Schwartzkopf said.
The U.S ethanol industry produced 3.4 billion gallons in 2004. By contrast, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans burn about 136 billion gallons of gasoline every year. We have a long way to go; however whichever fuel we produce here we don’t have to buy from some country we shouldn’t be doing business with.
The wholesale price of ethanol generally varies with the wholesale price of gasoline and, therefore, the price of crude oil. When we unleash power of America’s agrarian juggernaut to meet our energy needs, hopefully the efficiency of America’s farmers will create it’s own dynamic of supply and demand where a competitive market place can bring the price of energy to heel.
Between Jackson Hole’s flag waving patriotic rednecks that no longer want to support Arab oil producers to our neurotic, over the top tree huggers, there ought to be enough of us to support the success for a fuel outlet to start stocking some E-20 and E-85 so they can cash in on one of those $30,000 tax credits for converting pumps to offer E-85 fuel. I bet an eco-minded community like ours will make it worth it for a forward thinking entrepreneur.
Several years ago observation provided an epiphany that testosterone may be a factor of political ideological persuasion; later Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put forth his oversimplified hyperbolic “girly-men” comment about the California Legislature apparently coming to a similar hypothesis.
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It’s a subject of study that encompasses the range of human experience, its aims are to understand what people do or have done, and why. Every aspect of human beings from their DNA molecules to their beliefs about the supernatural from the beginnings of primate evolution to the present, pose anthropological questions. As I continue to ponder I figured that there had to be studies out there that had barked up this very same tree.
Applying the insights of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to political leadership, University of Kentucky emeritus professor of psychiatry Arnold M. Ludwig in his book “King of the Mountain” came to this conclusion: “As it happens of all the fields of human endeavor, politics seems to be the one most rooted in primitive primate behavior. “The striving for political power seems fueled more by secretions from man’s nether parts – his gonads and adrenal glands” according to Ludwig’s 19 year study that culminated in his book “King of the Mountain”.
A theory that all politics has glandular roots begged comparison of Ph.D. John Grey’s book “Men are from Mars Women are from Venus” which explores the intrinsic differences between men and women, I found many of the comparisons analogous to the conservative/liberal dichotomy. Venus was the Roman goddess of love, Mars on the other the god of war. A natural conclusion would be conservatives are from Mars and liberals are from Venus, each has their own interpretation of history, their own personal constitution. Both sides assert they are right and that the other side twists facts to suit their agenda.
Analyzing this metaphor one could conclude that if we are hard wired to react to stimuli in a certain way, it’s not a wonder both sides are so unpersuasive in altruistic heartfelt arguments to sell their point of view to the other. We naturally become angry or frustrated with the opposite persuasion because we have forgotten this important truth. We expect the opposite persuasion to be more commonsensical like ourselves. We desire them to want what we want and feel the way we feel. Our respective proprietary common sense dictates this logic.
Each ideology’s values are inherently different, and nonsensical to the other, as if we were living in two separate, but parallel universes that exist on the same plane. It appears that Conservatives from Mars and the Liberals from Venus are operating from a completely different worldview, and not very likely to be persuaded by listening to the other’s “side of the story”.
A Liberals nature reveals higher support for government safety net programs, they feel more deeply about poverty programs, and are more likely to support affirmative action. Liberals feel a need to support the role of big government’s nanny state because it just feels right, a general faith of government solutions to societal problems. When it comes to foreign affairs and war most liberals feel the need to appease and accommodate projecting a gross paucity of bravado. Quite like the Roman Goddess of Love!
Conservatives on the other hand believe that America’s safety net has become a hammock. They think that government social programs owe accountability of success. They believe the route to success is through achievement a belief that you offer a hand up instead of an escalator so once you get an individual up they will have the strength to stand. The conservative mind thinks if you project weakness, the weakness will be exploited, hence a value of bravado, possibly like the God of War.
On 11-08-2000 Mel Carnahan a certified dead man was elected junior senator of Missouri, political DNA apparently influences our political persuasion and is our political faith to vote our persuasion of preference, that’s what we apparently do no matter the evidence. It’s our political faith In spite of evidence of incompetence, corruption, malfeasance or death; ideological allegiance prevails over logic.
There is at least one big important difference. While Liberals and Conservatives are shouting past one another, and disagree vehemently on everything from foreign policy to how to greet one another at Christmas time, they both believe that their own ideological persuasion is correct and the right thing for America.
The Socialism Ideal is popular with Intellectuals and Academics because of the apparent rightness and fairness of this ideal. This idealism conceptualized in the ivory towers of our universities has been thoroughly thought out and debated then taught to students of said institutions who then debate it among themselves. Then the rightness and fairness of the ideal perpetuates itself among student bodies of our learning institutions by idealistic advocates in rose colored glasses. Out of our universities come our journalists, policy makers and legislators.
The intellectual aspect of American Socialism is what makes the Democrat Party’s position so popular with pseudo intellectuals, celebrities and nouveaux riche, it’s empathetic, politically correct, and doesn’t take much thought because the ivory tower guys have done the thinking for them. 89% of our journalists sucked this Democrat Socialist Ideal up like mothers milk in college resulting in retarding their instinct for objectivity, hence our biased media. Our Hollywood celebrities gravitate to this Democrat dogma in their incessant quest for popularity and political correctness, hence the popular culture endorsement. Largely lower income Americans have endorsed American Socialism, albeit not by name. Not attributable to their political analysis, but because they’re the major beneficiaries of these empathetic social (ism) program safety nets.
The un-debated oversight of this socialistic idealism is the fact that socialism is top-heavy with government management (bureaucracy). If government bureaucracy was designed on computer models, then administered by said computers that strictly adhered to the perimeters of said computer model, the Socialism Ideal would have a slim but possible chance of proving it’s promise. However, government is run by people, mostly lazy people with little oversight or accountability. This is what separates Socialist Idealism from Socialist Utopia. This is the reality of human nature, and it’s fallibility.
Socialism so0cial0ism 1.a. A social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community. b. The theory or practice of those who support such a social system.
2. The building of the material base for communism under the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist-Leninist theory.
Clearly American Socialism is distinctively different from the above definition. In America where we remain a capitalistic free market society. Incrementally we’re instituting social programs. Take note of the root word (socialism). Instead of a system owned collectively by the people, our system is owned privately but taxed mercilessly by the government for wealth re-distribution for our collective social good. I.E. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare and Education. This results in the American Socialism Model, better known as our social (ism) programs.
The socialism paradigm penalizes success and rewards mediocrity and failure. It brings to mind an old Russian saying. “The government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.” An apropos epithet for USSR’S Gross Domestic Product. Well folks, there isn’t a one of us that haven’t heard someone say “I don’t want to work overtime on Saturday because all the extra money will go to taxes.” We’re penalizing productivity for the alleged benefit of all. All being those that can’t or won’t provide adequate income, retirement or medical care for themselves, and those who don’t need it, but having had it extorted from them, insist on receiving their rebate as a social entitlement program.
Americans are a compassionate people, and we have always had a safety net for the needy as we should. However, as time goes on and we’re taxed into oblivion everyone is starting to demand their piece of our collective safety net, and the people we elect promise us just that. And they do their best to deliver said safety net for their re-election insurance, no mater the cost! As much as we are taxed, it isn’t enough to cover current entitlements (socialism programs), hence our $7.5 trillion collective National Debt.
As I listen to our politicians speak, I realize that incrementally we’re becoming a nation of dependent pan-handlers. To the best of my recollection it wasn’t a bunch of folks with their hands out that made this country great.
All I can say America is, “We better be careful what we ask for”!
John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington created a dynamic that fosters the greatest engine for peace and prosperity that has ever existed, the Constitution of the United States of America. Lesser men with the noblest of intentions are destroying it.
Today’s baby boom generation has refocused a myopic eye off of the well being of “The Greatest Engine” onto what they perceive as the general welfare of the currant 300 million temporary occupants of this land.
President Roosevelt’s New Deal and President Johnson’s Great Society although conceived by earlier generations has been sold to ours and embraced. Conceived with empathy and good intentions these and most social programs fail to factor human nature’s fallibility into their operation equation. Provided with an easier path it is human nature to take it. A society that removes the risk of failure nurtures complacency. A society that removes incentive invites lethargy. A society that penalizes prosperity condemns prosperity to failure. This is the dynamic we are now creating.
The Great Societies cradle to grave insurances provides another recipe for national fiscal collapse. Bureaucracy administers these programs; fiscally apathetic bureaucracy via human nature fosters bloat and waste, and crippling exponential bloat results in institutional collapse.
Baby boomers, “The Me Generation” has proven it’s egocentric nature and reputation in its embrace of the paradigm of America’s new socialism, Generation X and Y will follow our lead into oblivion. It befuddles me that we are willing to send our sons to defend our way of life while safely from the refuge of our homes we mandate our legislators to divvy up the national pie exceeding the pie’s logical limits.
During World War Two our greatest generation stepped up to the plate and selflessly subordinated their safety and very existence to something that was greater than themselves, “The Greatest Engine”. They understood that as individuals we are nothing but a mass of expendable protoplasm with a finite beginning and end that traveled a path more or less of our own making and in the big picture shouldn’t be prioritized ahead of something as great as “The Greatest Engine” at the expense of something more valuable to us that isn’t finite, our progeny.
We inherited a Jeffersonian Republic and we leave our progeny the blueprint for Karl Marx’s socialism a leaner meaner country bereft of the opportunity we took full advantage of and then some.
Children of multi-generation natives of Jackson Hole are moving elsewhere to find opportunity and where they can afford to buy a home. It puzzles me why community planners of pretty places such as Jackson exclude it’s native population in their comprehensive plans favoring wealthy immigrants instead.
The other day in a deli I overheard a conversation between an elderly couple and a NIMBY. (Not In My Back Yard) They were talking about the folly of the proposed land developments pointing out that all the valley really needed is a bus system to bring the workers in from elsewhere. I was compelled to join in.
Me: “Isn’t it fundamentally wrong that a real land shortage is exasperated by faulty and self-serving zoning that compels third and fourth generation blue collar Jacksonites to move to Driggs, Idaho Falls, Riverton or Salt Lake if they wish to buy a home or just get ahead in life.”
NIMBY: “If the fair market value of property drives them out, its fair.”
ME: “Yet you advocate denying Roger Seherr-Thoss, Robert Gill and Phil Wilson the opportunity of fair market value for their land further diminishing Teton County’s 3% of private land available for habitation by homosapiens.”
NIMBY: “Auto-wildlife collisions from increased traffic caused by more development justify denial of land rights; wildlife is my primary concern.” Clearly a thinly disguised excuse for no development in his back yard. The argument that there was an overabundance of most species was lost on him.
Me: My wife and I discovered through the legacy of our Subaru that our 120 mile round trip commute from Swan Valley to Jackson mandated Broncos and Suburbans so the wildlife we killed on our way to work went under our car and not through our windshield. It is my belief that I would kill less wildlife if I drove 5 miles to work instead of 60. Thus a faulty argument.
What irked me was this NIMBY’s inferred proprietary and exclusionary entitlement he felt to our Valley. The inference being if you can no longer afford your country club dues get out of the way and make room for those of us that can. His gross paucity of empathy for the severance of continuity of roots of the local families was shameful.
I have succumbed to financial pressure and left the area 4 times, but I lack the good sense to remain gone. I am doomed to cling to the periphery of this alpine nirvana, much less now as a participant of natures abundance than as a service provider of Jackson’s conspicuous terra consumer vista hoarders who lack empathy for the blue collar folks they displace yet need from afar. A symbiotic relationship they may wish someday they had reciprocated in a more thoughtful and comprehensive way. Satellite communities may be a fine place for the underclassmen, but historically satellite communities soon become self-sustaining and it’s population loses the desire to commute.
I know NIMBY’s in Jackson that are of modest income who wisely bought early that share this elitist attitude. As they participate at the ballot box and in public forums they need to contemplate the long term effect of density limits, building heights, and over preservation. The consequential effect of their complicity in the furtherance of artificial land shortages may create the dynamic that closes the door of local existence for their own children.
NIMBY politicians often refer to the Teton County Comprehensive Plan; this always makes me cringe as there is nothing comprehensive about the plan. The only way Jackson will achieve a truly comprehensive plan is if Teton County elected 2 commissioners from Victor, 2 commissioners from Alpine and one commissioner from Pinedale, all of whom must work in Jackson.
As a conservative republican I am not against the rich, quite the contrary I aspire to it and applaud those who achieve the American dream, wealth is the engine that drives America. What I am against is high land prices created by restrictive, exclusionary zoning that fuel inflationary spirals.and un-comprehensive planing devoid of the mechanics that perpetuate family and community.
Today’s partisan politics begs the question, who’s side are they on anyway? Regardless of which party, the answer spoken in deeds, not words is always - the side of their party, and America is becoming the victim of their divisive ways.
To become a representative of the people a candidate must decide if his view of America’s responsibility lies with liberal populism or conservative self-reliance.
A liberal’s nature supports government safety net programs and the role of big government’s as nanny state and exercises a general faith of government solutions to societal problems emphasizing the general welfare of the populace (Democrats and big government), When it comes to foreign affairs and war most liberals feel the need to appease and accommodate. Quite like the Roman Goddess of Love!
Conservative’s nature on the other hand believes that America’s safety net has become a hammock and government social programs have a fiduciary responsibility of success. Collective community success is through achievement, a belief that if you offer a hand up instead of an escalator they will have the strength to stand, emphasizing personal responsibility, local autonomy, and fiscal conservatism (Republicans and small government). When it comes to foreign affairs and war the conservative mind thinks if you project weakness, the weakness will be exploited, hence, a value of bravado, possibly like the Roman God of War.
Idealism is the driving force on both sides. They are both well meaning with opposite visions and polar opposite approaches of a better America.
Once a candidate has picked sides they must pander to the coalitions of their particular ideology to gain support and the money necessary to get elected. Pandering necessitates promises and promises always cost money, the money of our U.S. Treasury.
Liberals promise government social programs for the masses facilitating a secure, worry free, future, a position rooted in empathy. The opposite conservative vision is to grease the wheels of commerce, and get government out of the way, facilitating the entrepreneurial and independent spirit of our people which expedites commerce and job growth, a different approach which on its face may seem devoid of empathy until you analyze its harvest of societal rewards.
The liberal Democrat constituency mandates continual government intervention and implementation of insurance of the general welfare of the people, and their pandering representatives deliver the legislation to implement these social programs. Conservatives although against most social spending must agree to half measures of all social spending proposals to avoid being villainized as non-empathetic by the opposition. Conservatives need more than the business community for support and liberal, nanny state, social programs (free stuff) have some cross over appeal for non-analytical, values voters and blue-collar conservatives.
The result of this kind of compromise is, we always get a half measure of any social legislation despite how ill conceived, or the eventual cost of new bureaucratic bloat, the new social legislation likely will inflict.
There have been several democracies over millennia and their average length of existence is about 200 years. They always collapse due to the crippling exponential pressure on the treasury to deliver the promises made during ‘democracies’ pandering process.
There is a constant that we Americans should factor before we support new social spending. On average a social program’s actual cost is 400% more by its twentieth anniversary than the programs projected cost at inception, and they are never a bargain at the time of proposal and implementation. The cost of war and natural catastrophe, as expensive as they may be, have a finite beginning and end, social entitlement programs do not.
Democracies’ nature, ‘people voting for their self interest as they perceive it,’ seldom factors the real cost of a piece of legislation at the ballot box, their scope of reference, or interest is usually limited to their lifetime; A legislator factors only short-term gain for the next election cycle; this egocentric shortsightedness is a price ultimately paid by our progeny.
Daryl L. Hunter publishes The Upper Valley Free Press
Jon Shick of High Mountain Heli-skiing, the 12 good paying jobs that he provides and the $870,000 that 1, 200 heli-skier days would bring into our community are under attack again. A couple of aggrieved forest users Merlin Hare and biological consultant /environmental activist Debra Patla and the usual environmentalist groups filed suit in Idaho Federal Court challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s issuance of a permit that would increase the amount of heli-skiing allowed in a wilderness study area. The safe and appropriate upper limit of skier days was determined in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was determined to be 1200.
The radical environmentalist lawyers of Earthjustice of the heartless “Klamath Basin Bucket Brigade” fame (http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/ ) are representing the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Sierra Club, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, the Wyoming Wilderness Association, and Merlin Hare and Debra Patla in the suit.
The area of concern is the Palisades portion of the Snake River Range that spans the Idaho-Wyoming border between Jackson, WY and Swan Valley ID, the mountains south of Teton Pass. This area has been under permit to Mountain High Heli-skiing for 3 decades now. The environmentalist groups seek to limit heli-skiing here to the level that existed in 1984. Fred Smith of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance said: “We just want a solution that protects the interests of wildlife and restores the wilderness character of the Palisades.”
In reality, Congress mandated the Forest Service to manage the Palisades Wilderness Study Area (WSA) to preserve its ‘wilderness character’ as it existed in 1984.” Jon Shick says: this refers to irreversible activities such as the construction of roads, buildings, bridges etc., which are incompatible with future wilderness designation. If congress ever decides in the future to designate the Palisades as wilderness and to forbid heli-skiing, then heli-skiing would stop and there would be no evidence we were ever there. That’s what happened in the Jedediah-Smith and Gros-Ventre Wildernesses in 1984.
According to a Forest Service study, the permit area provides habitat for rare animals including lynx, wolverines, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats. Debra Patla and Merlin Hare of Victor, Idaho, claim to seek out the Palisades for quiet winter recreation such as backcountry skiing and snowshoeing. Kate Drexler of the Sierra Club making an argument against heli-skiing said, “Wolverines have been known to abandon their dens upon finding human tracks. This begs the question: if this is the case, should Merlin Hare and Debra Patla be allowed in there either? David Gaillard of Predator Conservation Alliance has said: “In two other recent decisions for the Sawtooth and Lolo Forests, the Forest Service took actions to help wolverines by reducing the area affected by winter recreationists. It’s curious the Bridger-Teton and Caribou-Targhee Forests haven’t follow suit.”
In considering the comments of David Gaillard, Kate Dresler and Fred Smith, wouldn’t the exponential growth and popularity of the Teton Pass backcountry skier and snowboarder, considering their ever-expanding boundaries apparently be grave threats to the denning wolverine as well. In reality, the backcountry skier community can take heart that the EIS states no wolverines have been observed in the area WSA, although biologists have actively attempted to trap wolverines there for years, none have ever been observed or caught.
Once again I would like to thank the environmentalist community for marginalizing themselves by putting forth another imbecile’s argument to further their anti multiple use agenda on our forests. Their red hearing about heli-ski operators scarring and stressing the wildlife living in snow deep enough that powder hounds pay $725.00 a day to ski it is amusing. I have another theory, they hate noisy machines and their “heart strings” wildlife argument is just another bogus means to an end. These are the same environmentalists that don’t want us to snowmobile on the snow covered roads of Yellowstone because snowmobile trails make it to easy for Bison to get from one food source to another therefore not starving to death in a timely fashion which exasperates the Bison overpopulation problem, as if starving to death doesn’t stress them. Please, let’s have some consistency!
I’m flattered that Debra Patla and Merlin Hare of Victor, Idaho would rather travel 30 miles to come ski and snowshoe at Palisades Creek 5 miles from my home than to do the same 2 mile from theirs in the beautiful Jedediah Smith Wilderness at Moose Creek. I ski Palisades Creek often and have never seen a helicopter there in winter maybe because I am not hardy enough anymore to ski the 7 miles to get past the cliffs that gave the Palisades its name, to get to a hill where a tourist could ski. Somehow I find their claim implausible.
Jon Shick summarizes, “This has been a trying 4-year process that included multiple public comment periods. It has been studied and reviewed, appealed, restudied and appealed a second time, and yet the FS still can find no significant impacts and no compelling reason not to issue us another special use permit.“
Wyoming’s elk feed grounds are coming under increasing scrutiny because the feed grounds crowd elk into unnaturally small areas which foster conditions that are conducive to the transmission of disease, this is why brucellosis is so common on feed grounds and game farms, and it is only a matter of time before worse diseases invade these feed grounds like Chronic Wasting Disease.
Brucellosis is a contagious and costly disease of grazing animals; it is problematic for game managers because it is transmitted to domestic livestock. Infection of livestock has serious economic consequences for the livestock industry as Brucellosis causes weight loss, loss of young, infertility, lameness and effects milk production, and it is one of the most serious diseases of livestock. The loss of “Brucellosis Free Status” costs a state’s livestock producers millions of dollars annually. Brucellosis is rarely detected in free-ranging elk herds.
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) a fatal, neurological disease is another looming threat for Wyoming’s wildlife and livestock industry. The disease has been identified in Wyoming mule deer, white-tailed deer and elk. CWD belongs to the family of diseases known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies a class of disease that includes Mad Cow Disease (BSE). Wildlife biologist Shane Moore has said; Nearly all experts agree that the risk of CWD in the Jackson Hole herd is not a question of if, it is only a question of when it will arrive.” He also said “in my opinion, supplemental feeding in the presence of CWD is our worse nightmare.”
Elk feed grounds have both pros and cons, the pros include; concentrating elk at specific locations to prevent agricultural depredation, prevents starvation, reduces commingling of livestock and elk, reduces elk/vehicle collisions, facilitates vaccination of elk, inventory studies, and stable elk numbers, they reduce competition with other species for crucial winter habitat, and they are popular with much of the public. Feed ground cons include; congregating elk in an artificially small footprint facilitates disease transmission, it costs Game and Fish about1.3 million dollars annually to manage 22 feed grounds not including the National Elk Refuge, this number excludes disease research. Feeding elk can send a message that habitat is not important!
Problems with discontinuation of elk feed grounds include; increased conflicts with highways, fences etc., winter range snow depths that preclude many areas as suitable winter range, increases need for proactive herd management to avoid heavy snow year decimation, heavy snow years will move elk from winter range to available food sources generally haystacks or cattle feed lines increasing elk/livestock interactions increasing damage claims to the Game and Fish and increasing friction with the agricultural community. There currently is not enough winter range to support present herds so it would decrease elk numbers 70-80%, costing about 22 million dollars to the economy of NW. Wyoming.
This complex problem raises some questions; are sportsman, hunters, outfitters and the general public willing to decrease their elk herd by 80%? Who will be responsible for large-scale die-offs due to starvation? How will elk be vaccinated? What will keep elk from commingling with cattle and causing damage to crops? Can our current winter range support more elk without affecting current deer, bighorn sheep and antelope populations?
Ranchers, hunters and outfitters largely oppose closing feed grounds, because they discourage elk from competing with livestock for forage, help keep them out of hay storage and help elk survive harsh winters and help keep up elk populations. Outfitter/rancher Glenn Taylor says; Fear is a great motivator and I think it’s rude and disrespectful to our ancestors who worked hard to establish what we have here today, because the elk herd, which is famous is what brings people to Jackson Hole. If we eliminate that elk herd on that Refuge, it’s going to eliminate a lot of other economic values to our valley.
Environmentalists say that closing some of the feed grounds would help fight brucellosis and reduce the threat of CWD by dispersing elk over wider areas. Franz Camenzind of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance has said; “If we don’t start cutting this down, and taking these animals off the feed ground, I’d say that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Wyoming Game and Fish, and Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce better start advertising this as the largest elk herd on a feedlot, and the most manipulated, tested, and inoculated herd in the world. It is no longer a wild herd and if we want to achieve some kind of wilderness back in this area, I think we have to take them off the feedlots.”
Historically, a portion of the Jackson elk herd wintered in Jackson Hole but many migrated to the Green River and Wind River basins to the south and east, and west to the Snake River basin of eastern Idaho. It has been speculated that thousands of elk once migrated from Jackson to the Wyoming’s Red Desert. When the feeding programs started the elk quickly adapted to the shorter migration. Research conducted for an environmental impact study for the National Elk Refuge studied ways to reintroduce historic migration routes to Jackson Hole’s elk.
When I first heard that environmentalists were pushing for closure of the elk feeding programs of Wyoming my first thought was the wolf predation in the Gros Ventre feed grounds were going to give their wolf a public relations black eye so I speculated the environmentalists wanted to disperse the elk so wolf depredation wouldn’t be so obvious. Upon further investigation I found that CWD was a real fear of biologists and scientists and it is imperative that a solution be reached. It is a pity that with all the critical issues that face the Greater Yellowstone Eco-system that many of us automatically think that if it came from the mouth of an environmentalist that it is another agenda driven convoluted distortion of fact or lie. In this case maybe it isn’t!
Growing up as a child in America, as all children, I loved the Christmas season, the Christmas tree, lights, lawn decorations, candy, mistletoe, cookies, Santa Claus, elves, reindeer and most of all presents, it was a magical time of year.
It sure was a surprise at age 12 when I found out that Christ was the root word in Christmas, my secular home had never pointed out the connection. Today I remain more secular than anything else and I question myself, why do I get so flipping angry when ACLU types are trying to remove all vestiges of Christmas from the public square when I am not religious.
The answer must be, the homogenization of Christmas is just another symptom of the dismemberment of traditional American Culture, another victim of the Culture War, call me old fashioned but I liked the America of Christmas past, the time of the singular Scrooge. Today Christmas to me is a lot less about presents and more about turkey, tom and jerrys with friends, family and tradition, but embarrassingly with only a perfunctory explanation and observation of the meaning of Christmas to the kids.
When Christmas retailers insult the patrons of their biggest season by removing the Christmas greeting it makes me want to not buy, when I was told that a member of the Start Bus Board forbade the drivers from displaying the Merry Christmas programmed into their electric signs I was outraged, When Christmas trees became holliday trees I was apoplectic.
I have a hunch that the ACLU and their minions are offending more than just their sworn enemies, the Christian right. If their goal is “not to offend” it is a fool’s errand as it is an impossible task because to accommodate the 15% of Americans who are not Christian you have a remaining 85% at risk of being offended as an unintended consequence. If their goal is to offend, they have aspired to a goal they have a gift for achieving.
My hope is my 6 and 9 year olds find the magic in Christmas that I had the privilege to enjoy as a child; I hope it is still possible in this increasingly divisive and hostile social climate. As for me and many others I suppose, I have had a giant intangible stolen from me by the secular leftists of the ACLU and their Christophobe allies and my Christmas’s will never be the same.
All the people of the western world are going to have a Christmas on 12-25 of every year, most will have a day off from work whether they celebrate Christmas or not. It stands to reason that a Muslim, Jew or atheist would celebrate an extra day off so merry Christmas to you all.
Montana, Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s office is planning on changing how bison that wander out of Yellowstone are managed. In recent weeks, 600 plus bison have been rounded up and nearly all of them will be sent to slaughter but some will be sent to a quarantined research facility in Corwin Springs MT.
State and federal officials say the hazing, capture and slaughter of bison is part of the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) approved in 2000 intended to maintain a viable wild bison population in Yellowstone, The plan is designed to reduce the risk of transmitting brucellosis, a disease that can cause abortions, from bison to nearby livestock.
An agreement with Church Universal and Triumphant to open up thousands of acres that abuts Yellowstone for bison range was approved in 1999 but the deal hasnÕt been consummated, as it requires $13 million to be given to the church. Gov. Schweitzer’s chief policy adviser Hal Harper said that this should become a priority.
The herd was estimated at about 4,900 last year and according to the IBMP, when the population of the animals reaches more than 3,000, the plan calls for slaughter of bison that wander out of the park without being tested for brucellosis
North Valley Food Bank in Whitefish and other food banks are the recipients of the bison meat of Yellowstone harvest. Predictably some groups, such as The Buffalo Field Campaign, have questioned the ethics of killing bison once they pass park boundaries but MontanaÕs food banks like the one in Whitefish are happy to reap the bounty of YellowstoneÕs prolific bison herds.
This year Montana had its first bison hunt in 15 years; the hunt came off with few problems, especially when compared to the hunts of the 1980s, which were plagued by protests, arrests and widespread publicity. Bison advocates have criticized the hunt because livestock regulators have a big say in it and they assert it doesn’t include enough territory for a “fair-chase” hunt. The hunters conducted themselves respectfully and those opposed to the hunt surprisingly did the same.
State politicians of both parties say they want to see the hunt get bigger next year. The hunt had to start small so reaction from the national media and interest groups could be gauged. It is a shame that environmental partisans and the news media often stand in the way of sane common sense solutions to problems.
As is everything “Yellowstone”, there is no magic bullet for the bison over population problem in the Yellowstone region. A consensus on such a divisive issue as a national park animal by interests as diverse as the cattlemanÕs association and the Buffalo Field Campaign is a logistical impossibility but let me float an idea.
The earliest Americans crossed the Arctic Ocean from Asia to North America during the Ice Age around 11,000 B.C. to 9,000 B.C. They walked across the land bridge and slowly migrated south establishing our earliest cultures. Anthropologists insist that these endemic Americans hunted bison in the Yellowstone region to survive.
Considering this, wouldn’t it be a great opportunity and learning experience for all to institute an anthropologically correct bison hunt for the aboriginal people of the Yellowstone region to be conducted as they were in the 1700’s. Imagine, the Griswold’s family vacation to Yellowstone while watching for moose, elk, and grizzly bear they happen upon a real live native American bison hunt, what an anthropology lessen and photo opportunity that would be.
Native Americans hunting a species that was nearly extinct 150 years ago, now so numerous that they have to be killed in a politically correct way. What could be more politically correct than natives exercising a part of their culture that has been practiced for 12,000 years.
The advantages are numerous, Native Americans gain an opportunity to practice their historical culture, tourists get to experience a real time anthropology lesson, If the bison hunts were established after the elk rut it could attract many more visitors to the park during a slow season, and the 3000 bison target could be achieved without divisive capture and slaughters, and boundary stakeout hunts. And who could argue that Yellowstone’s 2.2 million acres aren’t enough territory for a “fair-chase” hunt
Growing up a child of alcoholics in a single parent home with a mother who sang the praises of liberalism because it was liberalism’s socialism programs that delivered the welfare check, I had a front row seat to learn the failures of liberalism.
I learned I was a republican by the time I was18, just in time to help re-elect Nixon to his second term. Other than that I was the typical 70’s something counter culture rebel. During the 70’s and 80’s I was libertarian in many ways and it was convenient for me to endorse a woman or her partner’s right to choose.
Reagan was a breath of fresh air after Carter stagnated our economy, gave away the Panama Canal and showed Islam that liberals are risk averse pantywaists by the way he dealt with Iran. During the 80’s I would cringe when the Reagan/Bush platform publicly criticized abortion as I didn’t want to see the conservative’s cultural antiquity ruin their chances of the continuation of implementation of Reagonomics
During the presidential campaign of 1992 the Bush/Quail ticket’s main plank in their campaign platform was “Family Values. Considering my cultural ambiguity, my opinion of a “Family Values” platform was: how lame, isn’t there something more important out there to run on? Granted in 92 things were looking pretty rosy except for the shortest recession in history that was coming to a conclusion, the Berlin Wall had come down, the Soviet Union had collapsed the Gulf War was a slam dunk- but “Family Values” give me a break.
Then I became a father. All of the sudden it was now my job to steer my progeny in a direction that would be beneficial for their future. All of the sudden the world was a different place, it was no longer a playground for this former egocentric recreationist, it was the world where my progeny would grow up to succeed or fail. I was raised in failure and wanted something more for my children.
A sea change had reversed the way I viewed the world. I was no longer a fiscal conservative and culturally ambiguous. I had become a cultural conservative as well. A world that was fun and convenient in a - 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s” decadent sort of way, was now the jungle that my offspring would have to negotiate. During the Yuppie days we nicknamed “the 80’s” the “decade of decadence” a term of endearment, in our ignorance, it was our belief that “decadent” was only something the rich could afford having never looked up the definition in the dictionary.
By the time Bill Clinton got busted for his Lewinsky and convincingly to the liberals, denied that it was sex, my previously ambiguous moral apathy, was well on the wane, and this outrageous lesson to America’s children sent me over the top and I have been a cultural warrior ever since.
As my children grew I found some things do really matter. I became more aware of content on television, radio, CD’s, video games. I found that although still secular, I came to value the Mormon Homefront Campaign public service announcements, I started seeing the cultural wisdom the Christian Right had been professing. I found that James Dobson, Jerry Fallwell and Ralph Reed actually had some living wisdom to pass along. The Ten Commandments were good to follow regardless of faith or lack thereof. Most religions teach a valuable golden rule type lesson, lessons my children should learn.
I found that my children were making me a better person, by becoming more cognizant of my children’s media content, friendship choices, education quality insuring recreational busyness, and all controllable external stimuli, I was becoming more discerning. My children being witness to all things that are me, called for turning an introspective microscope upon myself and examining my internal content, because my children were watching and learning.
My children taught me family values in some sort of convoluted, circular, Karma like, what goes around comes around way. I started working harder, I gave up the fun jobs, and I started making more money. My concern for the welfare of my children was improving mine. A journey to achieve Family Values was proving to provide exponential and unexpected benefits.
We as a nation in 1992 rejected Bush/Quail, and their “Family Values’ message. Fourteen years later oral sex is epidemic in our high schools because of the “it isn’t sex” lesson, a super majority of Americans are against gay marriage and liberal courts may circumvent our wishes. God is being removed from the public square and being extricated from our holidays. The Boy Scouts are being vilified and penalized because they profess core values, yada, yada, yada.
I suppose that Bush 41 and Dan Quail were speaking to a more mature constituency than I could qualify for in1992. But today in retrospect I have to conclude that they were inarguably clairvoyant and their message was an important one, maybe we should have listened!
The cowboy is one of America’s most cherished and mythical figures. He symbolizes the mystique of the American west, a caricature of frontier courage, independence, and rugged masculinity. The iconical cowboy brings to mind, horses, cattle, the howl of a coyote, and wide-open spaces, the cowboy riding off into the sunset. In the west all these things are still alive and well but sadly the cowboy may be riding off into the sunset for good. Once cowboy poet and humorist Baxter Black was asked: What made you decide to become a cowboy? He replied: You either are one, or you aren’t, You never have to decide.
One day about 20 years ago I was having coffee at the Wort Café when a lady from back East asked me if I was a real cowboy, embarrassed I replied; if owning a few horses, a hat and living on a ranch made me a cowboy I guess I am. The truth was different, I rented a house on a ranch and my possession of a few horses and a hat didn’t make me a cowboy. Living on that ranch taught me that.
As a wrangler I blended in all right and probing tourists were surprised to find out otherwise but real cowboys could tell right off that I was new to the culture. It wasn’t because I didn’t know the secret handshake, it is because elementally you don’t just become a cowboy like you can become a lawyer or a doctor; it helps to be born into it.
Ranch life is hard and it builds tough resolute characters, “can do” people whose day starts early and ends late, it can be dusty, mucky, stinky, wet, cold, hot, and often is dangerous. Some think that cowboying is sitting on a horse and following a bunch of cows around but it is much more than that.
Years ago during one of the family farm crises when farmers and ranchers were losing their land my thought was what can they do for jobs, all they know is how to farm or ranch. Oh, stupid me, my ignorance of farm and ranch life was monumental. When that cow, horse or pig is sick that cowboy is often the vet, the tractor he operates teaches him to be heavy equipment operator, when the swather breaks it teaches him to be a mechanic, When the family gets to big he becomes the carpenter, plumber and electrician. When water needs a new route from point A to point B he is the excavator and surveyor, and when it is time to sell some livestock he often is the truck driver, country folk can do anything! A guy doesn’t just show up in a western town wearing a hat and automatically become a cowboy.
Recently the media has glamorized the West for a lot of other things besides the western culture. Our mountains and valleys have left indelible impressions on our minds from movies since the days of John Ford, but the last couple of decades magazines like Outside, Skiing, Backpacker, Flyfisherman, and Men’s Journal have romanticized western living for many of its other offerings and has fueled an influx of newcomers who often find fault with the cowboy culture they find there.
Some rejoiced at Hollywood’s attempt to emasculate the cowboy image with Brokeback Mountain, as many of the testosteronally challenged are inhibited by the cowboy’s cool, iconic image of strength and confidence. But the real threat to the cowboy isn’t from Hollywood; it is from the invasion of city folk of the cowboy’s home. When a backpacker is 12 miles out into the wilderness he doesn’t want to see a tenth generation bovine grazing in a beautiful mountain meadow. When a fly fisherman is putting the sneak on a spooky spring creek cutthroat he doesn’t want to be joined by a thirsty Bessie and her new calf. The mountain biker rarely has a pleasant encounter with a horseman on a narrow trail. The triathlete on the make doesn’t like loosing the girl to the quiet hick at the bar with the large brimmed hat. 150 years ago the cowboy squeezed the Indian off the land and now it is the cowboy getting the squeeze.
Jon Marvel’s Western Watersheds Project and the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign are trying to end public grazing on our rangelands. When public grazing ends and ranchers no longer have a place to graze their cows during the hay farming season the cowboy, as we know him will fade away also. Restricted to the confines of a bankrupt fenced in ranch and barred from the wide-open spaces, it will sadly spell the demise for this living icon of Americana.
The power of place, well we sure have that! The question is what are we going to do with it? We inarguably live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, our rivers, mountains, wilderness areas and our plethora of wildlife has presented many paradoxical, insoluble dilemmas, and the answers are tough and consequential ones. Everyone that visits here wants to move here, those raised here would like to stay, everyone wants Jackson Hole to stay the same, but nothing ever does nor can.
The residents of Wilson are the latest batch of Teton County residents to complain about the condensation of their community. The developers of Wilson’s affordable housing project hopes to obtain a zoning variance to increase density to make wiser economical use of land that is in such short supply in Teton County.
On one level I empathize with the plight of a neighborhood that might change, on another level I question where are the next generation of Wilson’s blue-collar residents going to live? Teton County’s wealthy are unconcerned about such things as they are not affected, but it confounds me that the working folks are just as willing to shut the door upon their own. It all seems like such a good idea to improve or preserve what you have however by blindly doing so we are embracing the law of unintended consequences.
97 percent of Teton County is federal land that is preserved for perpetuity, the remaining 3 percent is available for human habitation but much of that has been set aside for green space by the Nature Conservancy, the Jackson Hole Land Trust etc. High desirability and short supply has accelerated the law of supply and demand and is fueling a real estate inflationary spiral that has no end in site. Everyone’s property value goes up and everyone is happy.
Children of multi-generation natives of Jackson Hole are moving elsewhere to find opportunity and where they can afford to buy a home. It puzzles me why community planners of pretty places such as Jackson exclude their native population in their comprehensive plans favoring wealthy immigrants instead. Isn’t it fundamentally wrong that a real land shortage is exasperated by faulty zoning that compels third and fourth generation blue collar Jacksonites to move to Driggs, Idaho Falls, Riverton or Omaha, if they wish to buy a home or just get ahead in life? A community needs building densities that can mitigate land shortages that will accommodate affordable housing for Teton County kids when it comes time to kick them out of the nest, or welcome them back from college.
Many of Teton Count’s modest wage earners who wisely bought early share the “I’ve got mine ˇ back off” attitude, they may want to contemplate as they participate at the ballot box and in public forums the long-term effect of density limits, building heights, and over preservation. The consequential effect of this complicity in the furtherance of artificial land shortages will create the dynamic that closes the door of local existence for their own children. Un-comprehensive planning devoid of the mechanics that perpetuate family and community is in fact, the antithesis of community. Teton County’s current resident’s lack of empathy or comprehensive foresight for the continuity of community roots is short sighted.
I have lived and worked around Jackson Hole for 20 years and I have seen many of Jackson’s own born an bred have to leave to make room for the well heeled that financially displaced them. It’s nice to see your property escalate in value but if you don’t plan on selling someday you are just building yourself a bigger property tax bill that you may not be able to afford after you retire, many will have to sell out and move to Mud Lake where they will be able to afford the property tax bill.
Down zoning and embracing growth at the expense or our perception of value of place is counter intuitive as it is a part of our human nature to improve what we possess. It is also part of our nature to pave the path for the success for our progeny’s future. This dichotomy of purpose presents a conundrum that is truly hard to balance on our values scale.
A funny thing happened here in our Northwestern forest; a giant canard has been shot out of the sky. One of the most fought over endangered species in the history of the West, the Spotted Owl, contrary to popular belief appears to be the victim of an invasive species from the eastern forest; the culprit, the Barred Owl.
The Spotted Owl is losing territory because the larger, tougher, Barred Owl, desires it also. Barred Owls are a more adaptable species, being more flexible, they spread out effectively, and occupy diverse habitats. Sometimes they interbreed with Spotted Owls creating Spotted-Barred Owl hybrids.
Is the Barred Owl invasion natural? Kent Livezey, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said: “The Barred Owl’s migration was likely caused by people but not necessarily from fragmentation of forests from logging or development, rather, an increase in tree cover in the center of North America helped along by fire suppression and tree planting prompted the owl’s move west. But, they made it here under their own steam.” Native Americans also stopped burning the Great Plains in the 1880’s: an increase of tree density is the result. This accelerated the tree bridge from the eastern forests into the Spotted Owl territory of the Northwest.
This paradoxical development begs the question: what is to be done about the Barred Owl invasion? Clearly a thorny philosophical issue; what should be done about an invasive species that’s threatening the fine-feathered icon of environmental movement, their powerful logging stopping canard? Is the natural environment to be defined as pre-Columbian or prehuman? This question behind the Barred Owls’ westward expansion is critical. From a public relations standpoint, managing the Barred Owl to decrease impact on Spotted Owls is problematic. Worse yet is the ethical dilemma of exonerating the logging industry; an imponderable sacrilege for the environmental community.
Anti logging hysteria in the name of the Spotted Owl during the 1980s and 1990s resulted in the cessation of logging on approximately 22 million acres of national forest land. The closure resulted in the loss of 130,000 jobs and the closing of over 900 saw mills of the Northwestern forest.
Here on the Caribou-Targhee and Bridger Teton National Forests logging has all but disappeared. A valuable renewable resource, used by us all, is no longer harvested. A noble trade of the settlers of our region and their progeny has nearly disappeared, a victim of unethical junk science.
The US House of Representatives passed a new version of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on September 29, 2005. The updated version requires better science. Under the existing scheme, the government only has to use best available science, which often manifests itself as the best available science desired by the elite environmentalists.
The new Act, if passed by the Senate, would abolish the critical habitat set aside requirement. It would create a bigger role for effected local citizenry, state, and local governments. It would require best science be used, and all science to be peer reviewed to avoid the ethical transgressions of the past. A peer review by a team of outside experts will bring integrity to the process and remove the cloud from the ESA. Predictably the environmental community objects to any change in the law.
Logging was the scapegoat hastily blamed by environmentalists for the decline of Spotted Owl; clearly, logging may no longer be considered its demise. The loss of the 130,000 logging jobs and the closing of the 900 sawmills has devastated to the economies of logging communities. The size and ferocity of our wildfires of the past decade have been a direct result of the environmental community crying wolf about the Spotted Owl which brought to a screeching halt an industry that thinned our forests with very little financial help from our government.
The Sierra Club, and like-minded corporatephobes, in the aftermath of the massive fires of 2002 insists the way to thin our forest is to pay thinning contractors billions out of the U.S. treasury to remove vegetation with little market value. The moral and fiscally responsible course of action is to reverse the wrong that was perpetrated in the name of the Spotted Owl. We should fire up our logging mills in St. Anthony ID, Dubois WY, etc. We should re-deploy our tree fallers, haulers, and skidder operators into our woods; a smart, market based, solution to restore our forest’s productivity while restoring economic salvation for logging communities and reducing fire danger throughout the west.
America’s medical industry is in a crisis due to frivolous lawsuits and outrageous judgments to victims. Tort reform is desperately needed.
Dictionary.com defines tort as: tort • noun. Law - Damage, injury, or a wrongful act done willfully, negligently, or in circumstances involving strict liability, but not involving breach of contract, for which a civil suit can be brought.
Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi, R-WY, on 6-22-2006 called for reforms that will deliver quick and fair compensation to injured patients, while providing consistent and reliable results so doctors can eliminate defensive medicine and learn from medical errors. Saying the medical liability system needs to be repaired to work better for both patients and doctors. Max Baucus (D-MT) cosponsored with Enzi the Fair and Reliable Medical Justice Act. The bill is backed by a broad coalition of patient advocates and medical providers.
Enzi’s Fair and Reliable Medical Justice Act’s purpose is to restore fairness and reliability to the medical justice system by fostering alternatives to current medical tort litigation, including the creation of a special health care court that promotes early disclosure of health care errors, and provide prompt, fair, and reasonable compensation to patients who are injured by health care errors. To promote patient safety through early disclosure of health care errors and to support and assist states in developing such alternatives.
Sadly, on May 8th, the U.S. Senate failed to stop a Democrat filibuster on two other medical liability reform bills. The Medical Care Access Protection Act (Senate bill 22), a bill based on the successful medical liability reform in Texas which reduced insurance premiums by 22% and provides reasonable limits on non-economic damages ensuring patients, not personal injury lawyers, are compensated for injuries. The second bill, The Healthy Mothers and Healthy Babies Access to Care Act (Senate bill 23), addressed women’s impaired access to prenatal and obstetric care caused by America’s badly broken medical liability system. In many States, obstetricians, and gynecologists are being driven to close or dramatically reduce their practices because they cannot afford or even obtain medical liability insurance.
Sixty votes were needed to overcome the filibuster, but Democrat opposition fueled by huge financial support from the Association of Trial Lawyers of America scuttled the effort. Democrat’s refusal to allow consideration of these two Medical Liability Reform bills triggered its quick and silent death. Lets hope Senator Enzi’s Fair and Reliable Medical Justice Act, doesn’t suffer a similar fate.
In a startling admission by Democrats, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, that high premiums “are forcing physicians to give up performing certain high-risk procedures, leaving patients without access to a full range of medical services.” Clinton and Obama have sponsored the “MEDiC” bill.
The MEDiC program would promote open communication between patients and providers; reduce the rates of preventable medical errors; ensure patient access to fair compensation for medical injury, negligence, or malpractice; and reduce the cost of medical liability insurance. It would also provide federal grant support and technical assistance for doctors, hospitals, and health systems that disclose medical errors and problems with patient safety and offer fair compensation for injuries or harm. Participants would submit a safety plan and designate a patient-safety officer, to whom these disclosures and notices of related legal action would be reported. If a patient were injured resulting from a medical error or variance from standard of care, the participant would disclose the matter to the patient and offer to enter negotiations for fair compensation.
Doctors for Medical Liability Reform (DMLR) Chairman Stuart L. Weinstein, M.D. responded; “We’re glad that Senator Clinton has finally seen the light and is willing to admit that medical liability lawsuits undermine patient health care, but her proposed ‘MEDiC’ legislation does nothing to address the fundamental problem and little to stem the mounting crisis.”
This flurry of tort reform legislation wouldn’t matter in Wyoming if Constitutional Amendment D concerning tort reform had passed in 2004. Jackson Attorney Gerry Spence spearheaded its defeat stating: “This is the biggest case that I’ve ever done,” referring to his privately funded quest, a series of town meetings in the state to defeat this much need reform.
During his crusade, Gerry Spence said his law firm currently doesn’t have any cases against doctors, and he hasn’t had a case against doctors for some time. Immediately upon its defeat Spence bought a full page add in the Jackson Hole News and Guide for a class action lawsuit against Merck regarding Vioxx problems.
Governor Frank Murkowski (R) AK should sponsor information trips to Alaska and ANWR for all influential people involved with this issue.
I lived on Alaska’s coastal plain for six months once, and my ever darkening opinion of the place brought me to the tongue and cheek conclusion that the North Slope was good for two things, energy production and penal colonies.
Ann Coulter had this to say in an article about ANWR: ABC, NBC, CBS, have been accompanying discussions of ANWR with picturesque footage of caribou frolicking in lush, fertile fields, all of which happens to be nowhere near the site of the proposed drilling. ANWAR is 19 million acres– larger than Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hawaii, Connecticut, and Delaware combined. If oil is found, less than 2,000 acres would be directly affected. The area targeted for drilling looks a little like the moon, but less inviting.
Ann’s article is the first time I have heard this important point identified and printed. If every environmentalist spent some time on the coastal plain they would like it there much less. The longer they stayed; the more their ANWR antipathy could flower. If every anti ANWR drilling Congressmen had to spend some time on the coastal plain they might attain that epiphany they so desperately need so they may open their minds to reason and become adequately informed; if for no other reason so that they would never ever have to return to that God forsaken coastal plain again.
It should be mandated by Congress that all Congressional members must participate in these tours in if they wish to vote on such important legislation. Armchair America receives all ANWR information deemed pertinent by an ignorant media that has no concept of the place. The press who paint with a wide brush a misleading picture of ANWR should get an education on it.
These trips should include tent camping on the coastal plain where the oil drilling should occur; a place devoid of mountains, trees, or anything aesthetic however does harbor a thriving population of voracious misquotes and an incessant and miserable wind. The coastal plain tours should be done by tundra buggy and not by airplane as to insure their comprehension of the size, desolation, and misery of the place. They should see the Eskimo villages and share some whale blubber (muktuk) with the villagers to increase their knowledge of third world subsistence living in the USA. They should visit Prudhoe Bay Oil fields to see the caribou that gather there. They should see the pumping back into the earth valuable natural gas; a by-product from oil production that has been taking place for 25 years, because the energy industry has not been allowed to build a natural gas pipeline to Valdez. They should get a prop plane tour around the perimeter of ANWR so they could compare a 2,000-acre drilling footprint to the real magnitude of a 19 million acre property that comprises ANWR. A low-level jet tour of the perimeter of Alaska’s mainland would hammer home comprehension of what a vast wilderness Alaska’s 365,019,360 acres is, and how there is no shortage of wilderness up there. They will find Alaska harbors plenty of places for caribou to avoid human endeavor if they prefer to avoid the comforting warmth of humanity’s pipelines.
The state of Alaska could pay for these junkets out of their permanent fund, but I would think that Alyeska Pipeline Services, ARCO, BP, etc. would be happy to underwrite them.
Extracting the oil of ANWR is an unavoidable eventuality. God put that oil there, and humankind will not allow it to remain there forever. In 10 or 20 years, the Prudhoe Bay oil fields will by running out of oil. We currently have a pipeline which cost 9 billion dollars to build thirty years ago; instead of letting it go derelict from non use, when the Prudhoe Bay oil fields dry up, we should recycle the existing pipeline now by using it for our ANWR oil, This will save billions in construction costs while limiting intrusion upon the environment. Today we lack the citizenry that desires domestic energy, but that won’t always be the case. To build a replacement pipeline in 50 years because we lacked the will to make good use of existing infrastructure is shortsighted and wasteful.
The point must be driven home that drilling for oil on a 2,000 acre footprint, within a 19 million acre wildlife refuge (8.63 times the size of Yellowstone) will not make caribou lose their desire to procreate in the remaining 365,019,360 acres (570,374 square miles) of Alaska’s wilderness.
On 7-4-1776 our forefathers mustered up the temerity to declare their freedom from the tyranny of a foreign government. This brazen act set forth the foundation to build the freest nation on earth. During the following 16 years this new country crafted the foundation for our nation to succeed. This first contract with America sowed the seeds for America’s future greatness, but did it also sow the seeds for America’s future demise as well?
Our Freedom of the press is an impressive gift from our forefathers; it is also a great responsibility. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and America’s Media is capable of delivering prodigious amounts of sunlight. Humans act more responsibly when a light is being shined upon them.
During a war, too much sunlight can make it tough to sneak up on the enemy! Many in our media shine light where none should be shown. When someone in the CIA, FBI, Congress or some such organization leaks top-secret information to the press, it is incumbent upon a responsible media to not sell out their country for a shot at a Pulitzer Prize.
CNN’s Bernard Shaw broadcasted from Baghdad during America’s first war with Iraq; he also interviewed Saddam Hussein. Shaw refused to be debriefed by the U.S. military because he professed his obligation is to remain neutral in the conflict. It was as though Shaw considered himself more a citizen of the world than of the United States.
When our media published, Osama bin Laden was using a satellite phone and we were listening, what function of freedom did that serve? The freedom to recklessly publish at great security cost to our country?
ABC News in the aftermath of 911 forbade its journalists from wearing lapel flags. Barbara Walters explained: Wearing the flag is discouraged because it may confuse the audience.
After the abuses at Abu Ghraib were rightfully reported, the media beat the subject to death for a year and a half; this emboldened the enemy and inflamed their insensibilities resulting in retribution upon our soldiers. America’s Media seems to be aspiring to the goals of the al-Jazeera Network.
During World War II, Hollywood and Americas Media helped the war effort because Hollywood, the media, and America shared a common enemy; the enemy was defeated in 3.5 years. In Viet Nam, Hollywood and the Media never sided with America; this crippled the war effort and effectually lengthened the war and facilitated America’s loss. The mistakes in Iraq, equated to Viet Nam, were and continue to be perpetuated by the media not by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or the military.
Have we passed a turning point in journalism where objectivity has been bastardized into meaning reporters should stand midway between two opposing sides, even when one of the sides is their own? Has America’s Media deviated from an obligation to help its country? A rhetorical question; of course!
Freedom of speech is another such gift from our forefathers. Again, great power mandates great responsibility. When Al Gore, the Dixie Chicks and their ilk, uses their freedom of speech against an on going war while on foreign soil they have abused their freedom of speech.
Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and Al Sharpton use their freedom of speech validating the failure of those that have failed to lift themselves up in an America that is much more accommodating than the America of yore. Too retain a loyal following; these race baiters perpetuate the lie of the continuity of a ‘Jim Crow America’ by validating excuses that feed their followers simmering rage. Shame on them for not, singing the praises, of the many minorities that have made it to the top, they call ‘Uncle Toms.’ Shame on them for not standing with Bill Cosby whose truth exposes the real reason for this community’s collective failure. Bill Cosby hopes to eliminate poverty of the mind; Jackson, Farrakhan, and Sharpton perpetuate poverty of the mind because their fortunes are tied to the failure of those for whom they speak.
I wish I were free from ignorant free speech pawns; the grieving mother/father/wife/husband/child victims the media adopts whose unassailable activism acts as mouthpieces for a media that needs a layman’s face to espouse the media’s message.
Independence day is here and as a writer I value my freedom to speak and to publish. I wish I were free from the tyranny of the agenda driven media. It is my hope that those who use their freedoms in a reckless way, someday soon realize the fire with which they play.
The face of the west is changing, what was once a frontier populated with hard scrabble farmers, loggers, miners, cowboys, and ranchers has been infiltrated and is getting gentrified by interlopers from the cities that have a new plan for their adopted home, part of this plan is to end the grazing of our public multipurpose lands.
Cattle grazing on our public lands has not always been an issue. Until recently cattle grazing was a natural part of the culture of the West. Cowboys, Indians, tumbleweeds and cows were the first thing to come to mind when thinking of the west. For the last couple of decades this perception has been muddied, a battle has been raging between cattle ranchers and environmentalists. The battle is rife with mistrust and misunderstanding by all.
Jon Marvel’s Western Watersheds Project (WWP) is the driving force to form the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign (NPLGC). The NPLGC is pushing Congress to authorize the voluntary buyout and permanent retirement of federal grazing permits. The WWP and the NPLGC believe a payment of $175 per animal unit month (AUM); will reduce the contentious and adversarial conflicts concerning grazing interests and environmentalists on federal land.
The buyouts are voluntary, but the buyout amount being almost triple the average value per AUM of federal grazing permits in today’s market provides a powerful bribe for ranchers to succumb to the temptation. A rancher with 300 cows that graze on public lands for five months of the year, will net the rancher a $262,500 settlement. Some say that this expenditure is sound because WWP’s asserts $500 million annually is spent to administer public grazing will have a payback period of about six years after retirement of all grazing permits. The land area involved in 11 western states is about 270 million acres.
The General Accounting Office of the US government report concludes that federal agencies spent at least $144.3 million in direct and indirect expenditures to support grazing activities on federal lands in fiscal year 2004. A far cry from the WWP and NPLGC’s asserted figure. According the GAO grazing fees generated about $21 million in fiscal year 2004 less than one-sixth of the expenditures to manage grazing.
The WWP and NPLGC theorize permanent elimination of federal administrative costs of public grazing land will produce savings after the initial six-year payback. While the financial benefits of such a program are easily asserted, the environmental value of the plan seems to them even greater. By ending the negative impacts of livestock grazing will result in a rapid recovery of degraded riparian areas and all wildlife species dependent on them.
The WWP and NPLGC plan will change the face of public lands in the West. It will also greatly change the face of the private lands as well. Where there is great change there is also great opportunities for the law of unforeseen consequences
One unforeseen opportunity/ consequences that will result is millions of acres of previously useful hay production land of our western valleys that produced hay for the cattle that were grazed in the nearby public lands will have to find another use. These farms and ranches freshly freed from the bovine production industry will naturally evolve into something else, it isn’t too hard to guess that the highest and most profitable use of land is to subdivide it for profit creating millions of buying possibilities for America’s new insatiable appetite for rural living, and technology’s facilitation for them to be able to do so. Public land ranching maintains open space. 107 million acres of private ranch land are tied into public land grazing. Without access to public land forage, these ranches would be forced to sell out.
According to Rangelands Journal, 11,300 acres of farm and ranch land are lost to development each day. The greatest threat to biodiversity of plants and wildlife is fragmentation of habitat and public land ranching protects millions of acres of open habitat for rangeland species.
The influx of millions of gentleman farmers/ranchers will decimate wildlife much more than the evil cattleman did, every farmette will have a dog to see to it that no pesky grouse or other varmint is trespassing on the property. What the dog misses will be picked off by a 14 year-old with a 22. The exponential population growth will be matched with an equal increased visitation to all the beautiful public places. And the NPLGC and the WWP thought that a cow was destructive force in nature.
There have been few characters of American folklore with the stature of Paul Bunyon. This legendary hero of an earlier day possessed strength, speed, and skill that matched the vastness of North America. According to legend, Paul Bunyan and his giant blue ox, Babe, left many a mark on the landscape, receiving credit for creating Puget Sound, the Grand Canyon, and the Black Hills, among others. A lumberjack hero admired by all who read or heard of him.
On the third, full weekend of June Encampment Wyoming hosts the annual Rocky Mountain Champion Lumberjack Completion where loggers come from all over the country to compete for the coveted title. Chips fly during this competition using chain saws, axes and hand saws, the men and women competitors cut down trees competing in events that include: Tree Felling, two-man handsaw tree felling, two-man handsaw, two-woman handsaw, power saw log bucking, one-man handsaw, man & woman handsaw team, choker setting, axe chopping, pole throw, axe throw, power saw log bucking, power saw log bucking, and the mad loggers chainsaw throw.
It is refreshing to hear that this proud profession is still celebrated despite its vilification by America’s tree huggers who have turned a blind eye to their need for timber products in their crusade to reserve our forests for the Bark Beetle and fire.
Scientists and forest managers continue to tell us proactive forest management is a solution for overcrowded, unhealthy, and fire-prone forests. Thinning and logging reduce fuels and can make wildfires far less devastating while making mountain communities far safer. But some refuse to listen.
Estranged Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore in his effort to bring sanity to the debate has published Pacific Spirit; The Forest Reborn, and Greenspirit: Trees Are the Answer, two books that bring science and ecology to the discussion on the importance of using the forest resources in a pragmatic and responsible way. Moore says that, above all, sensible environmentalists rely on scientific evidence. They believe in compromise and cooperation, and work hard to find constructive solutions to real issues. A tactic his former colleagues of the environmental movement find hard to swallow.
Proof that Patrick Moore’s approach is bearing fruit is the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), a comprehensive system of principles, objectives and performance measures developed by foresters, conservationists, and scientists that combine the perpetual growing and harvesting of trees with the long-term protection of wildlife, plants, soil and water quality. There are currently over 150 million acres of forestland (equaling 24 Yellowstones) in North America enrolled in the SFI program, making it among the world’s largest sustainable forestry programs.
Here in eastern Idaho and western Wyoming it is a shame that logging has come to a screeching halt. Due to our overabundance of squeaky wheels here in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem our forests are being managed for recreation only. This has triggered the death of our forest products industry which dates back to the time of our settlers.
Throughout the Bridger-Teton and Caribou-Targhee, National forests vast stands of bug-killed trees are increasingly visible. Our recent draughts have made our trees susceptible to Bark Beetle infestation. Decreased tree moisture prevents the manufacture of tree sap which is the trees protection from Bark Beetle infestation. Our draught has abated for now but we are still left with millions of bug-killed trees and a thriving population of Bark Beetles seeking another opportunity for exponential growth during our next dry spell.
When we choose not to log our forests, by default we are choosing to look at burnt forests instead. Vast stands of dead timber are fires waiting to happen and when they do vast stands of healthy forest will burn with them.
Trees of our national forests are a natural resource. When a tree is cut down, we plant another. Renewability makes the forest different from many other resources. Since 1950, nearly 95 million acres has been replanted nation wide. Since then Western timber resources have increased each year. Properly managed, forests will last forever, while still supplying the wood products we all need. It’s a never-ending sustainable cycle.
Whoever wins the Rocky Mountain Champion Lumberjack Completion has achieved an accomplishment that Paul Bunyon would be proud of. All who compete can be proud of keeping a fine tradition alive. All who have the tenacity to carry on the honorable tradition of logging in our woods deserve our gratitude for risking life and limb to harvest products we need and making our forest homes a safer place, not our wrath for harvesting products we need and making our forest homes a safer place.
The illegal immigration debate has brought to the fore some interesting political dynamics that beg analysis. The imponderable elephant in the living room of this debate is the Hispanic voting block. The consternation of our legislators of how to react to such a large group has them so befuddled that they have forgotten the nature of their constituency.
Many of our legislators, GWB included have lost their compass. Many US senators while pandering for the votes of illegal aliens and those that employ them are alienating their historical constituency. We are lucky here in Idaho and Wyoming because Senators Thomas and Enzi of WY and Crapo of ID have retained much of their integrity on this issue, Senator Larry Craig has not.
Some Republicans who get large campaign contributions from Agri-business and other corporate sectors have forgotten that the reason they need money from big business is to influence the more numerous rank and file voters they have angered by their convoluted alien issue hyperbole. If placating big business to fund voter outreach to diffuse voter anger about big business pandering sounds like circle jerk, it is. Republicans view Hispanics as potential family values conservatives because of their predominantly Catholic faith.
Democrats are courting the Hispanic vote because they view Hispanics as poor folks who will vote Democrat, as Democrats are the purveyors of the social welfare system and the alien’s free medical loophole. While pandering to the Hispanic vote they are stabbing a large Democratic constituency in the back, Labor Union members. Much to the consternation of current union members, labor leaders and Democrats view 12 million new legal workers as potential AFL-CIO members.
Another voting sector politicians are stabbing in the back are African-Americans who in the absence of 12 million illegal aliens would be earning an estimated 8% more because less workers equals higher wages.
There is a dirty little word called “amnesty” and none of it’s legislative supporters will call amnesty by its name. Their convoluting of semantics is nothing but disingenuous subterfuge about their intent. For the sake of semantic clarity we can call it – lying! Their covert attempt to pass off a sow’s ear for a silk purse should not fly.
An inarguable dynamic of this whole debate is that in time amnestied workers will move out of undesirable jobs and into those desired by Americans. Of course by then the politician’s un-amnesty will have made them citizens and it will be time for another tsunami of illegal aliens to replace our upwardly mobile new Americans, the beneficiaries of the un-amnesty
The house Immigration Bill which calls for illegal aliens to be charged with a felony may seem harsh for our uninvited guests but it will serve an important function, it will permanently disqualify them as voters freeing up our legislator’s grey matter so they may think logically again. If we need unskilled labor it shouldn’t come with motor voter rights.
A gross failure of this legislation is the lack of a requirement of employer mandated health insurance, it should be the responsibility of the beneficiary of cheap labor (employers) to foot the medical cost of imported labor, not the taxpayers.
Another bogus argument is that we can’t just all of the sudden kick 12 million people out of the country at once. No one can really expect that nor should we. We should issue a one-year warning for them to get their affairs in order by working with their employer to rehire them legally out of Mexico where America could have in place an expeditive process for such rehires that would include issuance of green cards and temporary visas that could be carried out in a quick, efficient and legal way.
Illegal aliens that have been in America for any length of time will have a nice nest egg to take home to Mexico enabling them to enter Mexico’s middle class and help lift their own country up, we shouldn’t deprive Mexico of such assets. Other aliens that have been parasites on America’s social system instead also need to go back as they are Mexico’s labiality, not ours. Amnesty will deprive potential temporary workers of the future of a chance of coming to America so they can build their own nest egg depriving them of the possibility of building their own brighter well-funded future in Mexico.
Those who do not comply sooner or later will show up at the ER, jail, traffic stop or raid of business’ that employ them, or turned in by an employer that spots a phony green car