In its rush Thursday to take the rest of the summer off, Congress left behind a pile of unfinished work, some of which reaches into the National Park System. There's the Interior appropriations bill, which would roll back some environmental protections, and a controversial Public Lands Initiative for Utah that quickly drew fire. And then there's the draft platform for the Republican Convention, which holds freight aimed at fleecing federal lands and tying presidents' hands.
If there's any consolation for onlookers, it's that the House-approved Interior bill likely will be changed before the Senate agrees to it, and that the PLI legislation drafted by Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz, both Utah Republicans, likely won't see passage in its current form, either. As for the GOP platform, it will provide some great political theater next week during the convention.
Interior Appropriations
The measure, passed Thursday on a party-line vote, "includes dozens of policy riders attacking bedrock environmental protections for our lands, air, water, and wildlife—including a number of riders that would reverse important steps towards keeping the fossil fuels beneath our public lands and waters in the ground," said Friends of the Earth.
"Once again, GOP extremism has made the basic task of funding the government into a polluter-friendly circus. From fossil fuel extraction on our public lands to the gutting of clean air protections, this bill is Christmas in July for polluters. It is a sick joke, not a spending bill," said Lukas Ross, the group's Earth Climate and Energy Campaigner.
At the National Parks Conservation Association, the park advocacy group applauded the House for increasing funding for the National Park Service, but criticized the House for adding "many damaging policy amendments that threaten park resources" to the measure."
“The last thing our national parks need in their centennial year is legislation that weakens their environmental protections, threatens their resources and hampers rangers’ ability to do their jobs," said John Garder, NPCA's director of budget and appropriations. "But today the House of Representatives chose to approve just that. While we commend appropriators for increasing funding for national parks, as well as those members who worked hard to try and remove these harmful policy riders, the passage of this bill will only add to the challenges our national parks already face.
“We’d be better off with a Continuing Resolution than this bill, despite the increase in park funding lawmakers secured for our national parks. That is nothing less than a failure for our national parks and for all those who visit them. They deserve better than this," he added. "I hope that when members of Congress visit national parks during their centennial next month, they will see just how critical parks are to preserving America’s most treasured natural, historic and cultural sites. And I hope they return to Washington committed to protecting our national parks and not undercutting them.”
At Defenders of Wildlife, President and CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark said that it "is abundantly clear that the House of Representatives has stopped treating the Interior appropriations bill as a serious legislative funding measure, and has chosen instead to use it as a Trojan horse to ferry controversial, anti-wildlife riders through Congress."
"A number of new riders block protections for some of our nation’s most imperiled species and undermine sound management of national wildlife refuges that have been established as havens for many of America’s most treasured species," she added."Instead of dismantling safeguards for wildlife and public lands, the House of Representatives should be voting for a clean budget that provides adequate funding to manage our nation’s precious natural heritage.
“These riders aren’t just an assault on wildlife conservation in our country: they’re poison pills. Their inclusion in any final funding bill also greatly increases the chances of a government shutdown. The administration already issued a Statement of Administration Policy warning that if President Obama were presented with this bill, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto it. Ideological attacks on bedrock environmental laws have absolutely no place in this critically important legislation.”
According to Defenders, one of the riders would "delist all gray wolves in the continental United States by 2017. Another rider blocks federal funding to recover critically endangered Mexican gray wolves and keeps them out of the habitats they need to recover; a guaranteed recipe for extinction. The Mexican gray wolf is one of the most endangered mammals in North America. Equally nefarious, another rider makes it harder for American citizens to challenge violations of the Endangered Species Act in court."
Among other riders, the group said, one "would block federal conservation measures for wolves, bears and other carnivores on national wildlife refuges and preserves in Alaska, opening approximately 100 million acres of public lands to scientifically indefensible practices to reduce these species’ population numbers. Another bars a vital new rule that would update inadequate 50-year old regulations to manage non-federal oil and gas drilling on refuge lands and waters. A third rider would prevent implementation of a management plan for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which recommends wilderness designation to permanently protect core areas of this crown jewel refuge."
Utah Public Lands Initiative
A revised Public Lands Initiative released Thursday by Reps. Bishop and Chaffetz drew widespread condemnation from groups as diverse as the Evangelical Environmental Network and Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship to the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and The Wilderness Society.
“If Congressman Bishop was serious about passing this bill, he wouldn’t have introduced it the day before Congress leaves for summer vacation," said Western Values Project Executive Director Chris Saeger. "He is playing a political game concocted in Washington, D.C., to benefit his special interest allies, and not listening to the stakeholders who have been working on this for years. The great number of Utahns who expect protections for the economic values of outdoor recreation in the Bears Ears region now have few tools left at their disposal. Someone besides Congress will have to take steps to get this done because Congressman Bishop can’t hand his homework in on time.”
The tribal coalition singled out the following points in criticizing the legislation:
* The PLI divides the proposed Bears Ears Conservation Area in half and leaves large areas with important cultural and archeological resources unprotected. Boundaries that were proposed by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition for a Bears Ears National Conservation Area or National Monument were developed through detailed conversations with Elders, this bill does follow not their boundary recommendations.
* The Bears Ears National Conservation Area in the bill provides fewer protections than other National Conservation Areas passed by Congress and contains loopholes that would make it impossible for land managers to adequately protect cultural and natural resources. The bill requires all historic uses of the area be continued – even those that have damaged cultural areas. With this provision included in the bill, the NCA would not provide any meaningful protection for Bears Ears. This bill is far below the coalition proposal in terms of environmental protection.
* Damage from ATVs to cultural resources would be exacerbated under this bill.
* Tribes are not given an adequate say in the management of the proposed Bears Ears NCA. The PLI falls far short of true collaborative management.
"A Bears Ears National Monument proclaimed by President Obama under his authority granted by the Antiquities Act presents the best opportunity to protect the Bears Ears landscape and a strong Native American voice in monument management," the coalition said in a release. "We continue to believe that our monument proposal will establish one of the greatest of all national monuments and parks. The natural landscape – red rock, and gentle forest – is striking. The ancient civilizations of our Native people are evident everywhere. This monument will be one of the most distinctive and revered of all federal land units. The Coalition’s collaborative management proposal will assure that our Native voice, our vibrant cultures, and our traditional knowledge will be heard and seen at Bears Ears forever."
A coalition of groups -- the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Grand Canyon Trust, The Wilderness Society, the Natural Resources Defense Fund, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the Conservation Lands Foundation -- said the revised PLI legislation was "merely a dressed up version of the same bad bill."
“The intent of Rep. Bishop’s bill is simple: abandon our public lands to indiscriminate abuse by the oil and gas industry,” said Sharon Buccino, director of the land and wildlife program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It would open up this iconic Utah landscape to coal mining, tar sands, oil shale, and oil and gas development. That would put local communities and our climate at increased risk. And it would undermine the clean energy future we are already moving to.”
At NPCA, Southwest Region Director David Nimkin said the congressmen were missing an opportunity to protect world-class landscapes in Canyonlands and Arches national parks, as well as Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and the Natural Bridges and Hovenweep national monuments.
“Across the nation, including in southeast Utah, many of our most ecologically intact landscapes are anchored by national parks. Yet, national parks are only as protected as the landscapes of which they are a part. This legislation would make Utah’s national parks, at best, abandoned islands," he said. "It rolls back protections to the surrounding landscapes and undermines federal land management authority and expertise on park ecosystems. We are disappointed in the bill and its partner act, that flies in the face of one of our nation’s most bipartisan conservation tools, the Antiquities Act.”
Convention Platforms
With the Republican Party and Democratic Party conventions on tap, environmental and conservation groups are reaching out to party leaders, urging them to protect, not pick apart, the environment. Issues of concern include aspects of the GOP's draft platform that calls for turning federal lands over to states, and efforts to hamstring the President's use of the Antiquities Act to set aside national monuments.
"Your 2016 party platform presents an opportunity to explain to the American people how you will satisfy competing interests and protect our public lands for future generations. Healthy debate about how to manage federal lands is an important part of the democratic process. Your platform can advance that democratic debate by explaining how your party proposes to sustainably develop natural resources, protect wildlife habitat, ensure public access, and maintain our public land heritage for future generations," reads a letter to Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus from nearly three dozen conservation groups from across the nation.
"At the same time, we do not believe it would be constructive to include broad directives to transfer federal lands to state or local control, sell federal lands to private interests, or otherwise liquidate the national interest in federal land management. These kinds of directives do a disservice to the American people and especially to America’s hunters and anglers. These proposals do not advance the goal of finding meaningful ways to balance competing interests and preserve our national public land heritage for future generations."
The same letter was sent to Shirley Franklin, co-chair of the Democratic National Convention Platform Committee.
Meanwhile, a state representative from Maine was able to get the GOP platform committee to insert a plank that would require not only Congress but also states to approve any monument designation made by a U.S. president.
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Comments
I can remember listening to a radio news account of an assassination attempt against President Truman while I was home from school for lunch one day. (Yes, once upon a long time ago, kids didn't eat lunch at school.)
Never in my life of being interested in what's happening in my country have I seen such a nauseating mess as the sewage flowing from the GOP these days. (I know the other guys aren't much better, but at least they haven't quite degenerated completely into outright looniness.)
But not to worry. As long as you're prepared to weather a storm of national insanity.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/4117462-155/house-passes-bill-to-limit-new
But at least we have a state attorney general who has a little sense: http://www.sltrib.com/news/4117951-155/utah-ags-office-will-not-conduct
http://www.sltrib.com/news/4117462-155/house-passes-bill-to-limit-new
And in other news, Utah Rep. Jason Chafetz has prepared a bill that would disarm Federal law enforcement officers. This from Paul Rolly's column in this morning's Tribune:
Speaking of cops: Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz has done it again.
Chaffetz introduced a bill in March that basically would disarm federal officers responsible for enforcing laws on federal lands.
Now he has doubled down. Last week, Chaffetz placed anamendment to the Department of Interior appropriations bill that would take away the BLM and Forest Service's policing abilities.
"None of the funds made available by this act may be used to pay the salary or the expenses of employees of the Forest Service or the Department of the Interior to carry out law enforcement functions on federal land."
So while once again showing disdain toward federal officers, Chaffetz also was chastised by the Ballots Not Bullets Coalitionfor "ominous" comments he has made that could be taken to justify violence by anti-government groups against federal agents.
So disarm the agents and agitate the armed dissidents. That makes sense.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/4117193-155/rolly-utah-legislature-makes-it-h...
So Lee - where is the back-up for your baseless accusations? Oh, that's right, there are none because they are baseless accusations. Accuse on one thread and then run away to another to make another baseless accusation. Talk about a nauseating mess of sewage. Is it at all possible for you to engage in a rational discussion of a subject without name calling, making generalized slurs and fabricating claims of misdeeds?
I'll let other readers who don't wear blinders decide.
In other words, your answer to my question is "No".
Has anyone else noticed the phenomenon where, if you pick out a word at random, any word, and say it over and over in your head it ceases to even sound like a word, let alone have any meaning?
That happens in discussions as well, witness the mindnumbing overuse of the catch-phrase "baseless accusations".
Well, Lee, so you don't believe there is such a thing as Fake News when it might support your bias? Welcome to the realization, at some point, to BS politics.
But when somebody says what somebody else says isn't true souldnt they give something to prove its wrong? If they can't do that than isn't that a baseless accusations to?
Bishop is #1 on the list of the Anti Parks Causus.
Sure anon - if they actually say somtheing isn't true. But, if they merely ask for someone to provide evidence to support a claim, as I have, that is not stating whether something is true or not. Its asking for substantiation. Lacking substantiation, the claim is baseless.
Has anyone else noticed the phenomenon where Rick B is more than happy to jump into a conversation and attack but when he is asked a direct question he claims its beneath him to respond and runs for the hills?
Come on folks, enough with the brick tossing at each other. Let's stick to the issue at hand.
That said, it would seem logical and a reasonable request that if one is to raise an accusation that they be able to back it up.
In the case of Terry Tempest Williams, is it really surprising there's no hard paper trail that would show political pressures on the University of Utah to force her into retirement?
When you consider the move to force her out came not long after she and her husband made a successful bid at a BLM oil and gas auction, how hard is it to connect the dots when U administrators told her they wouldn't allow her to go into southern Utah's deserts with her students?
This from a story from the Salt Lake Tribune back in May:
Attempts to silence TTW have not been secret nor subtle for years. Perhaps the difference now is that some of her enemies have gained membership on legislative committees that control university purse strings. Then there are those shady secretive backroom deals where too much of our government decisions are made.
Only a fool would believe they don't exist.
Re Bishbop --- https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2016/04/11/135044/t...
Unfortunately, it works both ways. So-called liberal universities are just as adept at firing people who disagree. So that no one considers this a "baseless accusation," I share with Terry Tempest Williams the stigma of having "disappointed" my university. The courts ruled in the university's favor that I "should have known" they were committing fraud. Statute of limitations to the university. By the way. Most of the judges were somehow "affiliated" with the university, including the venerable President's Club. So yes, Lee, you are right about those backroom shennigans, but wrong to suggest they exist in conservative universities only.
As bureaucracies grow, they look to grow even larger. The World War II generation resisted bureaucracy; the baby-boomers grew to love it. On campus, they fought all their battles in the administration building, from civil rights to protesting the war in Vietnam. Then they got tenure, and as a colleague of mine puts it, sent the rest of the World War II generation packing.
The University of Utah should be ashamed of itself for bending to backroom pressures. But add to that Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, and all the rest. Today, all of them are running a scam. The scam is to take from parents $50,000 a year and assure those parents that their children are getting "educated," when instead most of that money is going to a bureaucracy that never stoops to teach a class.
It will end. Scams always do. But it will not be pleasant for everything and everyone hurt by it, up to and including our national parks.
No it is not a surprise. By her own account it was the quantity of her work not the quality or subject matter for which she was let go. If she wasn't let go due to political pressures, there wouldn't be any "paper trail". Until I see some evidence otherwise, I can only consider the claims baseless accusations.
PS - Kurt, why would her winning a BLM lease auction make her the target of political pressure to be removed?
Alfred, I don't believe I ever singled out "conservative" or "liberal" universities. I'm an equal opportunity disgustee at the current state of politics in our country.
EC, in her resignation letter, Ms. Williams said point blank that she was "being forced into phased and early retirement."
Further, she wrote:
Then she was told she was violating her contract by teaching her class off-campus. Further:
It seems the U was determined to fire/dismiss/retire Ms. Williams and couldn't come up with a sound rationale, so the flurry of different rationales and pressures.
As for the BLM matter: In a state that wants to take over federal lands so it can open them to development and energy exploration, to have the flagship university employ a nationally known writer who speaks out against such development? Shudder at the thought! Would you really expect letters to be written to university administrators to remove her?
As for the "quantity" of her work, her reputation alone likely helped attract students, and at least one foundation invested in the university because of her classes. I would think a university would want more professors/fellows/visiting writers with such reputation.
Yes, because she wasn't doing enough to earn her salary. That seems pretty clear. It looks to me like you guys are grasping at straws to excuse her underperformance.
Obviously a foundation whose mission is to "...ignite change. We support transformative leadership and courageous storytelling, inspiring action toward a peaceful, just, sustainable future" thought Ms. Williams brought plenty to the university and they invested $50,000 in it. Now that money will go somewhere else.
So be it.
If she was underperforming relative to her peers it makes not difference what the foundation thought. If they overpay her for underperformance (no matter where the money comes from) the other professors would say " why should I work hard when she gets paid for doing nothing". It looks to me like a very logical decision by the administration and there isn't a shred of evidence that there was any outside political pressure.
Oh, come on, EC. Terry Tempest Wiliams is a prolific writer and scholar by any university standard--and then some. My university told me the same thing. "Lack of scholarly growth," they said. And the people saying it--and making it stick--had to remove 1300 pages, yes, thirteen hundred pages--from my personnel file, including 65 positive, academic reviews I had received from all over the world for NATIONAL PARKS: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. The one review they kept? Of course, the negative review from a jealous nobody who had never written a book of his own.
Those insisting that Terry Tempest Williams "was underperforming relative to her peers" probably couldn't find the library with a searchlight. They became administrators because they feared the classroom and the library--the few exceptions being those people who can't wait to get back to teaching after serving in the administrative ranks.
For a committed conservative, you sure have a funny understanding of universities. I happen to know them all too well. The people now making the rules are the people who intiially needed to break the rules by fleeing scholarship and the classroom both. And don't get too comfortable about your medical schools, either. It has started there, as well. When doctors themselves cannot read and write, how do you expect them to listen to their patients?
Ah, but all of them are diverse. Tell that to their patients when they die of infections running rampant through the halls. One of our finest hospitals here in Seattle just failed winning accreditation because of that very problem.
But I digress. This was about Terry Tempest Williams. I can't say I agree with everything she says, but I sure love how she writes. If that is now called underperformance, then Shakespeare indeed is dead.
But not a professor. If she wants to be paid to teach, she needs to teach, not write books or whatever. By her own admission she was being released because she wasn't teaching enough. If she wants to be a "prolific wirter and scholor" she needs to find someone that is willing to pay her for those skills. If she wants to be a professor at a university, she needs to teach.
I suspect you are not familiar with college educational system. Most of the primary course books or additional course books required by my professors, were written by them. There is a saying in university academia, "publish or perish". She should not be condemned for publishing a that is a requirement.
Take a few moments to read all the comments posted by our Esteemed Comrade. Note all the dodging, twisting, turning and contradictions.
Alfred and Kurt, y'can't win. Kinda like the greased pig game at the county fair.
And before you say it, Comrade, we'll let other readers read and decide for themselves. No point trying to discuss it further.
Name one.There isn't a dodge, twist or contradiction in any of my posts. More baseless accusations.
Secretary Jewell has been visiting southeastern Utah for the past three days. She has been touring the proposed Bears Ears monument and has been meeting with people both pro and con monument. Here is the latest from Deseret News:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865658180/Jewell-shocked-at-lack-of-p...
Here is an op-ed from the Salt Lake Tribune by Terry Tempest Williams:
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/4113256-155/op-ed-with-monument-proposal-t...
Here is a paragraph from her essay that I found particularly touching: It is time for us to go outside our own places of comfort and dare to embrace a new way of seeing. The tribes are opening the door, inviting us to cross a threshold where a more expansive conversation about land protection awaits us. They are taking us beyond the rhetoric of wilderness designation to a wider view of how we can live in place with reverence and restraint. Leaders like Jim Enote from the Zuni Pueblo remind us how these desert lands are "source, not resource."
And this: Our national parks and monuments are not simply "America's best idea" but an evolving idea. In their quiet and dignified manner, the tribes are leading the way forward with a vision of land protection in Utah that is at its core, spiritual. We are the sum of all our relations, both human and wild.
Why do you folks continue to feed this worthless troll? Pretty much for many many years now, all forum threads are hijacked and completely thrown off course by this lowlife. Just move one, and ignore. He's not worth the effort.
EC, the term is "Publsh or Perish," not "Teach or Perish." I taught six classes with over 300 upper division students every year. Lisa Birnbach's College Book named me my university's most popular professor. I guest lectured in many other programs on campus, including Landscape Architecture, Forestry, Native American Studies, and Geography. I was adjunct assistant professor in Environmental Studies. More undergraduate teaching there. I was on 15 Master's and doctoral committees. Teach? I loved to teach--and write. But our chief administrator, the university president, was a bureaucrat through and through. In fact, they named the administration building after him when he retired. Everyone on the faculty considered it a perfect tribute.
Terry Tempest Williams was not let go because she didn't teach enough. None of the higher-ups--even on the faculty--spend much time in the classroom these days. 69 percent of all college teaching NATIONWIDE is done by part-timers on limited contracts. No benefits, thank you. You have Obamacare! Now, teach the kids so we can drink coffee all day and write another "report."
Say it ain't so! It just can't be that bad. Oh, no? Even Kurt just sent me this link:
Her own words. "I was being classified alongside other fellows, my value seen solely on the basis of how many hours I was teaching, not what I have written or published or contributed to the wider world"
I think I'll go by her words rather than the speculation of those that want to believe otherwise. When someone comes up with the name(s) of someone that applied political pressure and the name(s) of those to whom it was applied and evidence that it happened, I will be happy to accept it.
Boy oh boy. Watching folks self-appoint themselves as experts in various fields and then argue against established __actual__ experts in a fieled. Climate change, academia... the list goes on. To paraphrase a phrase, now THAT is 'baseless ego'.
Rick - Exactly what field did I appoint myself an expert in? Reading english? Noticing the absense of facts? Tell us, who provided the political pressure, who was pressured and how was the pressure was applied. You don't have to be an expert in any field to answer those questions if the answers in fact exist. But I suppose you will do your usual attack and run - just as you have when you have been asked to explain why the client science predictions have been so wrong.
I hope you guys never get on a jury. You'll likely convict with absolutely no evidence because you would like to think the defendent is guilty.
EC, you do make a valid point about "proving" what is said. I believe the point being made here is that the "proof" is in the action. Hillary Clinton wants us to believe that she never "intended" to risk classified information. The point is: She was being careless long after she was told not to be careless. Is that not "intent?" In a court of law, it is the action we charge, after which we leave it to the jury to determine one's "intent." Was it first degree murder or third degree manslaughter? What was the killer's frame of mind?
There is no way to "prove" frame of mind. It is rather the feeling the jury gets, right? How do the facts stack up, yes, but what was the perpetrator's frame of mind?
There is nothing baseless in observing that this country's frame of mind has gone to hell. The actions of the country prove it. Just look at the candidates we get to choose from. And yes, I will give you that forcing science to become a belief is right up there with determining that a Secretary of State has no responsibility for protecting the public's records.
Now what? How do I, as a historian, tell the history of the Department of State? I don't. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. The records by now have been entirely corrupted and aren't worth a dime to history. But neither do I disbelieve in what is obvious for all to see. The rich are indeed getting richer, and the poor getting poorer, and the middle class struggling to hang on, too. That worries many people, even if doesn't worry everyone, and no, it is not a baseless accusation to say that there is something sinister behind it.
Terry's dismissal for lack of production wasn't proof of any political pressure. And in Hillary's case, Intent wasn't necessary. The mere act of putting them on a private server was illegal whether there was intent to risk them or not. If there was intent there could have been additional charges.
I'm sitting here beside our creek reading Terry's book, The Hour of Land watching one of our families of resident mallards as I turn between pages while the water's music mutes sounds of the city outside our tree shaded condo community. As I do, it hits me. I feel a little tightness inside my throat as I read some passages. This is not a book one reads with the brain. Instead it's one to read with the heart -- and those are the best books of all.
Maybe Terry Tempest Williams is even more valuable to us now. Certainly her writing must be able to reach more eyes and hearts now than she could have touched as a college teacher. Maybe the University of Utah's callow caving to a crowd of people who have probably never felt the wonderment of wild is really a blessing for those of us who have. Because maybe now -- hopefully now -- she'll have more time to put her words and phrases on paper to reach a wider audience of people whose hearts have not been jaded by dollars. And won't it be wonderful if now and then her words somehow wake the hearts of some of those whose only interest in wildness has been trying to wrest the greatest profit from places that are really sacred?
I can hope,can't I?
Which is exactly why it makes no sense she would be fired for political reason. And, despite your repeated accusations you have absolutely no evidence of "University of Utah's callow caving to a crowd". Just more of your baseless accusations.
Esteemed Comrade, I genuinely pity you. In your deaf blindness, you have no idea what you are missing.
I love it, EC, when you prove that ideology trumps history all the time. Perish the thought that people of influence and power would ever stoop to use it! I believe that history book begins: "Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a good and loving king who never liked wearing clothes. All he asked of his subjects was to allow him to sit naked on the throne. However, if anyone should pass the throne they were to compliment him on his fine new suit of clothes. If they didn't, it was off to the dungeon, or worse, off with their heads! He was kind and loving otherwise, but he had this problem with the truth. . ."
As a historian, I have pieced together a good many paper trails suggesting untold pressures on our national parks. For example, when the park superintendent is asked to meet with the concessionaire, what do you think they're talking about? The weather? The follow-up letters used to be gems, until everyone started to realize that the Freedom of Information Act just might apply.
But fine. Keep telling the Emperor you love his latest suit. I do, too, quite frankly, especially the toupee. But why is he wearing it THERE?
Oh, now I get it! He intended to wear it where it belonged, but no one told him where it belonged. So he just concluded he could wear it wherever he wanted, since after all he was the Emperor.
Emperor Hillary? I don't think so. There will never be a paper trail again.
And no doubt they exist. But the fact they exist doesn't mean they are present in every case. I prefer waiting until I have evidence before making accusations. Again, I hope you stay away from the jury box.
Lucky for you, EC, every time I have been called in for jury duty, I have been dismissed the moment I divulged my Ph.D. The coffee and doughnuts were good, however.
It's the ideologic rationalization and blind denial by people like our Esteemed Comrade that enables the dishonesty and crooked dealings of our political hacks. I keep hoping that some day enough people will wake up and realize what's actually happening and then begin to take action -- on election day -- to put an end to it.
I guess this is as good a place as any to post this. Some credit may be due to Rob Bishop for at least one thing -- here's an editorial from today's Deseret News regarding his support for The Recreation Without Red Tape bill sponsored in the Senate by Ron Wyden of Oregon.
There is a link contained in the article that will allow you to read the entire bill if you wish. To my unlawyerly eyes, it looks like it has some merits.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865685898/In-our-opinion-Differences-...
I suspect the result of this legislation will be to open up hiking trails in wilderness and potential wilderness areas to mountain biking, and rafting on all of the rivers in Yellowstone and other parks. Both groups have been waiting for the right political environment to accomplish this and with Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke in charge now is the time. I also suspect the recreation industry including National Park concessioners will gain much more control over management policys. If you are in favor of bikes including e bikes on your favorite hiking trails, boats in areas such as the Lamar River valley and the Yellowstone River through Yellowstone, and increased lodging development in parks then you should be very pleased with this new legislation.
Of course there is 'fake news', as long as Alex Jones and FauxNews are on the air. The phrase, however, gained popuylarity when Trump started to use it to describe anything that he doesn't like, like when he is quoted accurately.
You prove my point, repeatedly. Tell me you don't believe the NPS revisionist Fake News about the Statue of Liberty that's being pushed. That would be getting close to ignorance if the facts.
"...NPS revisionist Fake News about the Statue of Liberty...". You'll have to point out which screed you're referring to, TA. If it is something you've heard on Faux News or Alex Jones I haven't seen it. And I'm trying to remember if I've ever commented here on the Statue of Liberty.
Only in Right Wing Land is "fake news" capitalized.
The "Caps" are more about rejection of my Ex's English Major fastidiousness but do note your "Cosmapolitan" inclination of denigrating those of us that don't have letters (Caps) following our names :). Have a good day.
I think he's referring to this story, Rick:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/politics/emma-lazarus-poem-statue-of-liber...
We'd all be as Trump drunk as the Esteemed Comrade if this were a drinking game wherein shots were taken whenever the excuse "baseless allegations" was employed.
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