Senator Tester Slips Bill Calling for Mandatory Logging of Public Lands into Omnibus Spending Bill

[Generic Other]

If you liked what President Barack Obama and his Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar did in the Gulf of Mexico: Leasing 53 million acres in the Gulf during Obama’s first year in office (more than any of his predecessors) and approving 5,106 oil drilling wells there, including 591 deepwater drilling rigs; all with no prior environmental analyses, no public participation, no environmental safeguards, and no restrictions or regulations; thereby creating the worst environmental disaster in the United States of America’s history — then, you’re going to love what Obama and his Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack have planned for the last surviving ecosystem in the U.S. outside of Alaska.

U.S. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), strongly backed by Obama and Vilscak, has a bill that was written in secrecy by timber industry lawyers and timber industry lobbyists, a bill often referred to as the “Tester Wildlands Logging Bill,” that was unable to withstand scrutiny from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee due to the financial and environmental costs of its Congressionally-mandated logging quotas, but has now somehow magically appeared on pages 893 to 942 of the 1,942-page $1.3 trillion Senate Omnibus Spending Bill.

http://www.alternet.org/story/149223/senator_tester_slips_bill_calling_for_mandatory_logging_of_public_lands_into_omnibus_spending_bill

[Aramchek]

1. the same omnibus that didn't pass?

[glinda]

2. Is there a petition to sign anywhere????????????? K & R

[tabatha]

10. Here is one

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x268311

[tabatha]

3. That does it for me.

Obama, Salazar, Vilscak and Tester can all go to hell.

If I come across a petition, I'll post it. I normally get things like that in my email.

On edit: this is one of the comments:

"This is biological and environmental rape for the enrichment of a very few people; and not less than any other crime for profit is a criminal enterprise that has to be halted and prosecuted. The loss of species through habitat destruction, along with the degradation of natural resources, will be devastating well past the proposed $140,000,000.00 (ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY MILLION DOLLARS) of assumed debt, liability and attendant costs of logging by FOUR of Senator Testers pet companies. This is theft of land and resources, plain and simple, and Senator Tester is a criminal. "

It is really bad.

[Bandit]

4. Republicans have already succeeded in stopping this Bill

They won the battle and a temporary Bill will be in effect until Republicans take Control of Congress to write their own Bill. Lucky us....

[glinda]

5. Just contacted our Senator's office. They will pass something. Don't know if this will still

be in there. Please still contact your Senators and alert them to this issue regardless. They should l watch to make sure this doesn't ever get in there. Ever.

[Generic Other]

7. Every ti8me I turn around some new atrocity!

Thanks for info. I am going to be watching to see that this one doesn't slip in in some other form!

[gratuitous]

6. Magical, self-writing legislation!

And nobody knows how these 50 pages got into the bill. It's not bad enough these fuckers want to rape the planet, but they want us to to pay for the motel room.

[formercia]

8. A whole herd of Trojan Horses.

No wonder they don't want us to read the legislation before it's voted-on.

[glitch]

9. "Republicans are treating this country like a company in liquidation" Robert F. Kennedy jr.

Paraphrasing. Fire sale as the doors close.

And they are the ones who get appeased.

What a world.

[Octafish]

11. It's like being in charge of the buyers AND the sellers.

Sort of built-in conflict of interest fixers, but remember: IOKIRDI.