From the April 2008 Idaho Observer:
Bush, et al still waging war on the west
Most people remember the Clinton era as an eight-year assault on private property rights. The assault has been ongoing, it’s just been conducted under the cover of the "war on terror," the Mexican invasion, nonstop political scandal, a burgeoning police state and looming economic disaster. The three following articles are short but prove that the Bush administration has continued the war on the west and property rights in a fashion that would make the Clintons proud.
Army declares war on SE Colorado
The U.S. Army has been working toward securing a 5-million-acre live wargames reserve in SE Colorado since the late 90s. The "Army Land Expansion Project," which also encompasses a piece of northeast New Mexico and the eastern panhandle tip of Oklahoma, has been hotly opposed by a well-informed network of locals. Pinon Canyon activists claim that the plan would force generational family ranchers from their land, destroy the region’s agricultural economy, devastate the environment and harm wildlife.
In contravention to a bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush Dec. 26, 2007, that prevents funding for the plan through FY2008, a $500,000, multi-year contract between the army and a consulting firm to continue with the land acquisition part of the project was discovered.
Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton recently advertised for a Colorado Springs-based "Army Land Expansion Project Manager" whose duties would include managing the army’s land acquisition process.
Go to www.pinoncanyon.org for more information.
Kempthorne continues where Babbitt left off—and then some
Interior Secretary and former Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne is advancing the Bush land grab agenda. Members of Kempthorne’s staff testified before the House Natural Resources Committee in favor of the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS).
The bill passed 278-140 in the House April 9, 2008 as HR 2016. The bill will effectively lock Americans out of some 26 million acres of BLM land. "HR 2016 (NLCS) will essentially place a National Park like regulatory overlay over the top of 26 million BLM acres," observed Chuck Cushman of the American Land Rights Association of Battle Ground, WA.
The NLCS plan was the pet project of Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. Passage of HR 2016 is, essentially, putting into law the NLCS plan set up in the last few months of the Clinton administration.
Secretary Kempthorne is also in favor of the federal government assuming control over all water and all land that is sometimes covered with water (see article at right). He is also supportive of the military acquisition of 5 million SE Colorado acres for a live military maneuvers training area (see article above).
Creation criminals to fight global warming with nuclear proliferation
Aside from everything we know about the never-ending toxicity of nuclear waste and depleted uranium, and the fact that Washington’s latest designated waste repository for it is Yucca Mountain in Nevada, right on top a drinking water aquifer in an earthquake zone, CFR members senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA) have introduced a "global warming" bill, America’s Climate Security Act (S 2191), which, along with an elaborate cap and trade system that will benefit the oil industry, offers $542 billion to "zero and low carbon technologies," mainly, nuclear power. With Bush now claiming that nuclear power is safe, the industry has responded enthusiastically, with five new applications to build new plants in the US and 13 more expected this year. These nuclear giants are absorbing the cost of building the plants at taxpayer expense and privatizing the profits. They are not financially sustainable, and certainly not earth friendly. Please, contact your representatives (202-224-3121) and tell them NO on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Bill.
(from March/April 08 Public Citizen News)