marichiko

(sigh) Where to begin? Shall we try logic? Oh, what the hell. As least you won't be able to say that you were never exposed to the concept. And I'll let you slide on having the faintest knowledge of science on account of the fact that public schools now seem to teach intelligent (their word, not mine) design in place of actual science.

Federal = national = belonging to the nation ( a nation is made up of ALL its citizens).

Local = local.

Suppose your grandfather had a 1,000 acre farm. He dies and leaves the farm to all the members of the Beestie family. equally. Let's say that at this point the Beestie tribe has 40 direct descendents of Beestie the First. Without consulting you or anyone else, one of your cousins decides to appropriate 100 acres of land, sell it, and keep the proceeds of the sale for himself since he still lives in the same home town your grandfather did, while the rest of the family has moved away. Do you say to him, "Great idea, Cousin! You go right ahead and help yourself to that land, now valued at $1,000/acre. Go ahead and keep all the money, and if you decide to sell some more of the inheritance gramps gave us all, hey, don't even bother telling me or anyone else in the family. You're "local", after all!"

If the Federal government is going to sell Federal land, then, at the very least, the proceeds of the sale must go to benefit the nation as a whole, not some hicks in Bumfuck, Idaho who can't be bothered to go find another job after the sawmill closed down.

Federal land is NOT sold to the big logging outfits. The timber on that land is sold to them. That's it. In the past, the Feds gave in to a short sighted and greedy timber industry and allowed widespread clear cutting of national forests. The forests of the Pacifc Northwest and in the southern part of the US could regenerate to some extent from these massive clear cutting operations because these areas receive a higher amount of rainfall, and it doesn't take as long for a tree to grow maturity in these locations.

In the Rocky Mountain West, the practice of clear cutting was devastating. The soils here are too thin and the rainfall is inadequate. Clearcut 500 acres in Colorado and 100 years later, what you have is 500 eroded acres of land, covered with myrtle spurge or tumble weed plants (the tumble weed originated in Russia, beleive it or not).

You can rave about pinko environmentalists all you like, but the factors of rainfall, soils, geography and plant ecology, as well as climate, will remain indifferent to your rants. Its a bit like the idea of intelligent design. You may beleive in the literal interpretation of the Bible, but the earth still revolves around the sun - not the other way around - the rock you have climbed up on to give your sermon remains far more than 6,000 years old, and viruses continue to mutate happily along, proving that genetic change does occur in living species now just as it did back when.

Now anybody over the age of 6 understands that even under the best of conditions, you are not going to plant a sapling tree and have it grow to a size making it worthwhile for the timber industry to harvest in 5 yerars. It won't happen in 10 years. In our southern forests, its possible to harvest timber after 15 years, but that's under the best possible conditions of rainfall and climate.

So the Feds giving in to the logging companies and the congressman from Bumfuck, authorized the sale of all the timber on the National Forest within a 100 mile radius of town. The yokels in Bumfuck all got logging jobs for a while and then the trees were all gone and the logging company is now down in the Amazon cutting down the rain forest. The logging company didn't bother to replant the acres it harvested since it was Federal land and not their problem. Bushco thinks trees cause forest fires, so why use the taxpayer's dollar to replant forests when that money could be given to Halliburten, instead?

W. and his cronies come up with a bandaid solution for a severed artery. Let's sell Federal lands and give some of the proceeds to the local school district. That's nice for a few years, but what happens when THAT money is all used up? The land around Bumfuck is now in the hands of a private developer who sold out the parcels as ranchettes to folks who come stay on them for two weeks out of the year and spend the rest of their time somewhere else. Now, not only do the youth of Bumfuck have no funding for their schools, their folks still don't have jobs either, and the region has become another Appalachia.

Don't bother to respond, I already know what your well thought out reply will be

Frankly, I don't give a damn. I have no children and I'll be dead. You and your kids get to live with the environemtal/financial nightmare that such policies will cause. I won't.