Really?
They think that do they? They want us to subsidize their life styles?
I’m sorry but that’s a really laughable thought.
Why the f**k are Harney County residents getting demonized to begin with here? The damn article is about outsiders. Outsiders who are detested there.
The people of Harney County are not the ones occupying the refuge.
Somehow that has gotten lost on this thread.
They are dependent and we can’t seem to understand why they resent it? Its a quirk of human nature to resent not be grateful for the person or entity you are indebted to – most especially when you cannot get out from under it. I welcome those democrats and progressives who will step forward and address the complaints of this crowd humanely and honestly – and who will pledge to work with them to develop public policy which respects the environment and the right of human beings for self-determination.
It couldn’t be true because it runs counter to my preconceptions.
Yours truly,
Ammon, Rand & all the other tough, independent cowboy libertarians in the great open frontier
I’m a native Oregonian and have spent my entire life in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Northern California, and British Columbia). I also happen to be a professional ecologist, so issues relating to land use are of specific interest to me.
The article is correct when it states that the closing of mills devastates local economies. There was a time when every town in timber country had at least one mill (evidenced by the wigwam burners that were ubiquitous). But here’s the deal that nobody seems to acknowledge: the reason the mills have closed is because timber is exported as raw logs rather than being milled locally.
Trees are still being cut (4 billion board feet in Oregon last year), but they aren’t being milled, and milling is where the majority of the industry’s jobs are. The kicker is that it is illegal to export raw logs that are harvested from state or federal land, so 75% of that 4 billion comes off of private land where it can be cut, trucked to Coos Bay, Astoria, or Portland, loaded on a ship, and sent to China. Wave goodbye to your jobs.
Care to guess where the biggest increases in non-exportable timber harvest come from? BLM land. In other words, it’s the private land owners and the people that the Bundys think are the rightful stewards of the land who are in effect exporting jobs. In truth, government policy is place that not only attempts to preserve the environment through regulatory measures (stream buffers, road building technique, selective harvest, etc.) but to keep jobs local by not allowing raw timber export.
I lived in Lane County (Eugene/Springfield) in the 80s. This is the second most populated county in the state and the home the state’s flagship university. At the time, county unemployment was around 15%–of course the timber fellers, truck drivers, and dock workers all had jobs, but if you were a mill worker, well, sorry. Everyone blamed the Spotted Owl.
I am sure “land management” includes restricting logging so the trees can grow back. The same idea totally pissed off fishermen for years but they had to do it. Over fishing was destroying the industry
While I agree with the sentiment, my problem with your comment (probably unintentional) is it furthers the idea that government jobs are somehow not real jobs, or are lesser jobs than people working in the private sector. Some of the most important jobs are being done by the people in the government. In addition, stuff the government does, it usually gives out for free so everyone can benefit from them. Whereas stuff done by the private sector usually only benefits the owners on a long term basis (a classic example is the internet, which the government basically gave out for free, and could not have happened on a private network…we did have private network alternatives. They came to you as free CDs and included AOL throughout the 90s, and were terrible).
It also bolsters the concept that a “real” economy does not rely on the government, but bootstrapped rugged individualists. The world is far too connected, and a single human can have far too much impact (largely due to technology) on their environment, as well as their fellow citizens and humans, to think that someone can just go out there and live by themselves. The only way this is possible is if they want to live a monastic life. But that isn’t what the rugged individualists do. They still want their mail delivered, they still want to be able to drive their trucks, they still want to talk to their kids on their cell phones, they still want medical services when they fall sick, they still want to be able to purchased their mass manufactured jeans and guns. All of which is made remarkably cheaper (and affordable to them), because those of us who believe in a society of mutual assistance support them. But what they don’t want to do is contribute back to this society they benefit from.
Individualism in America today is basically wanting to benefit from all the benefits of modern society, but not wanting to contribute your fair share back.
So, I’ve definitely gone onto a different tangent in this response, but I think this belief in rugged individualism that sees society as an intrusion, but still wants to benefit from all of society’s many positives, is the driving force behind these divides over federal lands, “takers”, etc. And as someone who is almost certainly giving many more times than them, can you blame me that it pisses me off that it’s usually the largest beneficiaries of society’s largess (which I support) that go and tell us that society is stealing from them?
Edit: I regret the rant parts of my comment because it plays right into the hands of our “fill in the blank” overlords who want to keep us divided.
The reality is that the actual amount of money that goes to support any particular class of people who are not in the top 1% is minuscule compared to the massive heist the richest families have conducted on the rest of the country and the world. They are thrilled when someone like me gets all worked up against someone else who is also struggling, because it diverts attention from them.
People are trapped by geography . They can’t afford to stay there with few employment opportunities, and they can’t afford to move to an uncertain future. After 2008 I remember those who said people should move for better employment opportunities. How could they move with no money? There is a real deficit of empathy for people who are trapped.
Wow – good post. Write it up and hand deliver it to the Democrats!
One of the consistent failures of so many Democratic politicians at every level is their inability or disinterest in making the point you’ve just highlighted: the notion that if we just turn everything over to “free enterprise” that our economy will magically start booming. The magic of “free enterprise” is exactly what is impelling these timber companies to export their raw logs to China for milling.
So how many of them are returning crop subsidies? Paying full value for running cattle on government land? Respecting environmental science and the resulting regulations? Avoiding mining water?
I am, mostly, for these government handouts. The economics of farming are peculiar and unpredictable and it pays to be very cautious if you are a farmer. I want a strong agricultural sector based on sustainable practices.
But the resentment of the Federal government and the resentment of seeing anybody else helped coupled with the pretense that no one is helping them is ridiculous.
The federal government didn’t timber the land, that was the capitalistic private sector.
Once the fishermen try it, though, they like it, a lot.
I want that, too. We are all in this together as Americans. I just wish everyone would abandon “libtard” and “rethuglican” so we can relate as human beings again.
Always simple to blame the Federal Government for Market failures. The WTO sets import duties on Canadian Lumber, not the USFS, and the USFS cannot provide viable routes to market for either lumber or raw materials
No question; the “free enterprise” is only in place to achieve one goal.
“When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals.” John Maynard Keynes
This is another place where the issue feathered head brought up comes into play. What your are saying is true, and I’d bet that sooner agrees. The problem is that lefties too often buy into the framing from the right, the urban-rural divide, the private industry-government divide, the makers-takers divide.
If we want to win, we have to stop that.
Part of that is having empathy for people brought up to make a living from the land and then being forced to take a prison guard job. They probably don’t mind delivering the mail as much. And they probably enjoy wildlife refuge jobs. But being brought up to something glorious and then being literally stuck in a prison is really difficult. Being brought up to be modestly independent, as most of us are within the structure of roads, mail service, etc., and not being able to put food in your mouths without help is really difficult. Republicans are great at mining the emotions surrounding those changes, and then screwing the population. Democrats need to learn to do the messaging better. They already have the policy.
Yes it was very successful. Some species very depleted came back in large numbers.
Perhaps the help offered is actually NOT enough – but is enough to trap them in debt and dependency – which is humiliating and they can’t deal with it.