Reply #51: Senator Tester Slips Bill Calling for Mandatory Logging of Public Lands into Omnibus Spending Bill

[Demeter]

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

AND THE BEAT GOES ON....

This sets a dangerous precedent for forest management, endangers wildlife and amounts to a $140 million gift to the timber industry courtesy of taxpayers...

IT'S A TRIFLE, HARDLY WORTH MENTIONING...NOT EVEN HALF A BILLION..

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...