Paul Bunyan Meets Sierra Sue Happy and the Democrats
NewsMax.com
Diane Alden
Aug. 14, 2002Those of you who went to school BPC (Before Political Correctness) might recall Northwoods folk hero Paul Bunyan. Paul was the legendary creation of lumberjacks like my great-grandfather.
These tough and resilient men worked in the big woods of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan in the mid- to late-1800s. Ordinary working men, mostly immigrants, they lived in frontier logging camps inventing stories and folk heroes in order to pass the long winter nights. Paul and his blue ox, Babe, were part of the legend. Pre-PC folk heroes like Paul and Babe captured the imagination of America's grade-school children. But that was then and this is now.
These days the politically correct and powerful Sierra Club is having a contest for America's schoolchildren. The idea is to give Paul Bunyan a makeover. No, what it really amounts to is re-education camp a la the Chinese Red Guard's Cultural Revolution. The idea is to deconstruct and remake folk heroes like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Sunbonnet Sue, Mike Fink and others by reconstructing them into politically correct green icons.
A Sierra Club website directs children to deconstruct old Paul into a more acceptable image for a new age. The site states: "Paul has repented for past abuse of our forests and is volunteering with Sierra Club. To help Paul tell his story to children, we are looking for help updating the legends and tall tales of Paul Bunyan. The older stories do not tell of his transition to a tree planter, and how his latest cold blew down the white pines in the BWCAW (Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness) when he sneezed."
This particular deconstruction is from a Minnesota-based Sierra Club website. The "sneeze" they are referring to are the half-million acres of trees blown down in straight-line winds that hit the area on July 4, 1999. What the Sierra Club doesn't tell you or your children is that salvage operations to clean up the mess are being totally stopped because of litigation from environmental groups like the Sierra Club.
Up Canada Way
On the other side of the border, Canadians responded to the devastation by clear-cutting a swath of trees on their side. As policy, the Canadian answer to the nuttiness of American environmental groups is to take measures to save their forests. Canadians somehow find a way to use common sense such as selective cutting of trees, even the evil and dreaded clear cutting in some places, plus salvaging wood scrap, taking down diseased old growth and keeping track of various diseases which have struck their forests.
Somehow the Canadians have managed to devise a sensible plan to deal with the forest problems BEFORE they get out of hand. It seems, with some notable exceptions, their environmental community actually cooperates in forming these plans rather than consistently litigating against forest management plans.
Forestry in Canada is about optimizing forest and "ecosystem" health while allowing local rural economies to have some benefit from tree cutting and replanting. But then Canadian green organizations don't rake in the kind of money that American greens do.
Going to court to prevent any kind of mechanical removal of trees, or adopting an elitist high-horse attitude, or demonizing ALL logging and ALL loggers as the devil incarnate is not the way Canadian greens operate. There is no percentage in having the kind of attitude American greens have adopted.
In fact, most Canadian green troubles come as a result of the coterie of their neighbors south of the Canadian border. It is America's spoiled green brats who go to British Columbia and plague them with ideas about the Wildlands Project as they attempt to tell Canadians what to do with their forests. The Canadians are actually managing quite well and have become pretty adept at ignoring them.
My advice to Canadians: You have enough problems with forest fires already. Don't add to them by adopting unrealistic American environmental policy and make things worse.
American green guerrillas are heavily financed by American foundations and trusts from Pew to Ted Turner to whatever leftist Multibillion-dollar foundation is looking to centrally plan North American economies.
Meanwhile, back in Paul Bunyan land, when the fires come to northern Minnesota – and they will – the Boundary Water Canoe Area will burn. Foresters who know and understand this place intimately believe that super-heated crown fires and rotting-wood rubbish will fuel a tinder-box-dry conflagration. The effect will be akin to a nuclear blast going off.
If the fires are hot enough, the forests and soils will burn to bedrock, releasing toxic substances into the watershed. If the fires spread, surrounding small towns will go as well.
Not all forest fires have a devastating effect. Some fires are good. But the fires of the last 10 years are catastrophic fires, in some cases reaching temperatures of 2,000 degrees. Ground turns to glass and nothing much will grow for decades.
The question begs to be asked, where is commonsense forest management in all this U.S.? Why don't we have policies that work for the forests, the communities in which they exist, helpful to critters, community and people alike? Why do ignorant courts and stupid politicians continue to prostitute themselves to America's out-of-control greens?
Common sense and forest management should not be antithetical. But American greens have made that the case. When the BWCA does explode with the impact of a nuclear device, Minnesota's last stand of 67,000 acres of 400-year-old white pine will in all likelihood burn down too.
Failure to Learn From Experience
Right after the catastrophic fires of 2000 which burned millions of acres all over the West, including Montana, environmental groups sued the Bush administration to block removal of charred trees. In the Bitterroot National Forest of Montana, The Wilderness Society and American Wildlands filed a suit barring removal of potential fuel for the next set of fires.
Their reasons for this were that they think the public comment period had not been long enough and therefore violated federal regulations. What that means is that they didn't have time to get the preprinted postcards to their membership in time. Or perhaps the big paycheck from the Pew Foundation didn't show up in the mail to pay for multimedia campaign and post card blitz, TV ads, radio announcements and parties for Clinton's bunch in Washington.
Congressional testimony following the Clinton roadless initiative, which was brought about through executive order, indicated that Pew spent $4.5 million in a successful attempt to influence the Clinton administration to go the green way. Of course, just before he left office, he obliged them and with a stroke of the pen placed approximately 60 million acres in a roadless condition, thereby making it that much more difficult to fight fires.
It is amazing that environmental groups, elite foundations and politicians living thousands of miles away from an area can cavalierly set policy for that area whether or not that policy is sensible OR destructive.
Greens and politicians playing fast and loose with people's lives and property is both unconstitutional and cruel. That contemptuous attitude does not take into account that badly managed federal forests create problems for ALL forests, private and public.
Tactics are used which do not do the environment any favors. By using phony endangered status of the bull trout in 2000, firefighting efforts were curtailed or stymied. That fire burned over 300,000 acres, 20 percent of the Bitterroot's 1.5 million acres. Never mind that 1,500 people fled the area.
A report by Audrey Hudson in the Washington Times related that firefighters said they were stopped from pumping water out of creeks to fight the blazes lest the pumping injure the trout. Yet the extreme heat boiled the water and converted it into steam, leaving the streams dry and the fish dead.
One firefighter stated, "It's absolutely ridiculous the way they are doing this." Another firefighter said the refusal to allow fire retardant near Philipsburg, Mont., because of the threat to bull trout allowed that fire to grow to 42,000 acres.
The Sierra Club also opposes salvaging the timber, saying the logs should stay put because downed and burned trees reduce erosion and provide habitat for woodpeckers.
Ye gads and little fishes! That is like saying don't give your child a blood transfusion because his death will reduce the surplus population and allow you to buy the BMW you've had your eye on.
Again it is a Sierra Club, simple-minded, one-size-fits-all answer to all fires and all forests. No forest can be dealt with in a collective manner using the same template time after time. It does not take a brain surgeon or a conservative writer to figure that out – a dose of common sense is all that is needed.
Catastrophic fires leave zip habitat for woodpeckers or anything else. Catastrophic fires, which the current fires are, leave nothing behind to hold the soil during torrential rains. Water runs off such soil like a tsunami hitting a treeless atoll. Because of the number of acres burned, the erosion and silt will clog up waterways, plus release toxic substances in the ground water.
Catastrophic fires create a situation EVERY bit as bad as the worst case of clear-cutting.
Fire can be a good thing when it is low intensity. But low-intensity fires are not what is happening in the West today. High-temperature blazes not only damage the forests but also destroy animal habitat that will take decades to recover. Yet the Sierra Club continues blindly to push for policies that don't WORK.
In her testimony before congress in 1997, Ann Hanus, assistant state forester in Oregon's Department of Forestry, stated: "The kind of catastrophic fires that we've been seeing in recent years have been very high-intensity, very hot-burning fires. What we saw many years ago, which was very beneficial for forest health, were the low-intensity, along-the-ground type fires.
She continued: "Those were good because they cleared out the brush, and they helped to take care of fuel buildup. Now, when fuels have built up over many years, for a variety of reasons, when you have a fire hit, it is of a catastrophic nature. … [I]f we continue down the path of the catastrophic fires, we can end up having fires of such hot intensity that literally sterilize the ground as well as silt up our streams. And I have seen areas where it has burned and silted up streams and been very detrimental to fish and wildlife."
Sierra Sue Happy Does Democrats
Just about the only time groups like the Sierra Club don't sue to prevent mechanical cutting or clearing, and the only time they find ways to compromise with local communities and firefighting efforts, is when they and their Democratic Party allies understand there is no other choice.
In an extremely timely "what goes around comes around" scenario recently, Tom Daschle was caught red- or should I say "green-handed" trying to get an exemption from NEPA, National Environmental Protection Agency standards on forests.
Almost overnight, Tom Daschle figured out that the pine beetle infestation in and around the Black Hills forest needed to be addressed. Under pressure from people who actually LIVE in South Dakota, as well as his fellow Democrat Senator Tim Johnson, who is running for Re-election, Daschle decided that it was time to get REAL about thinning and logging in the Black Hills by mechanical means.
But does Daschle brag about this exemption which he obtained for his state? He quietly placed that exemption into the $58 million security appropriations bill which passed Congress a few weeks ago. It exempted South Dakota from NEPA regulations.
He didn't have to do much arm twisting of the Sierra Club, however. The newly converted Sierra Club (Sierra Sue Happy) and a combo of other smaller green groups received a no-roads restriction on other land in South Dakota, as well as 3,000 acres added to wilderness designation, plus endangered species restrictions on all logging in South Dakota.
Before Daschle's deal, the Sierra Club had taken the proposed exemption to court and was willing to let the beetles and the fires have their way with South Dakota and the Black Hills.
Up until Daschle's sweetheart deal, news stories in local papers like the Rapid City Journal indicated more than minor reluctance to compromise for the sake of saving the Black Hill's forests.
Up until a few months ago, Sierra Club websites stated the "Sierra Club opposes all logging in the Black Hills National Forest, even if such thinning measures would mitigate the risk of wildfire.
Furthermore, the Sierra Club alleges that claims of pine beetle infestation in the Black Hills are scientifically unfounded and merely tools used by timber companies to promote commercial logging and that bug infestation are "part of the natural process" that should be permitted to run its course in the Black Hills. (Associated Press, 1/25/02)
Ah, Mao and the Red Guards would be proud. Shades of running-dog capitalist pigs. Managing to allow a profit while helping forests reach optimum health. Will wonders never cease? Somehow the Socialist Canadians have found a way to accomplish both goals. Yet in the U.S. we allow Sierra Sue Happy and groups like it to dictate policy which amounts to "burn, baby, burn."
Daschle's Deal allows a 700-acre timber sale to be exempt from the National Forest Management Act and NEPA. The Sierra Club signed off on the deal with promises not to sue or appeal nor would they ask for any judicial reviews by any U.S. court. The Rapid City (S.D.) Journal reports that "two other litigants – Biodiversity Associates of Laramie, Wyo., and environmental activist Brian Brademeyer of Rapid City – rejected the deal."
Western lawmakers whose states are being consumed by fires were incensed when they discovered Daschle's dirty little green secret.
J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., protested, as his state was in the process of burning down. Additionally, Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, and Scott McInis, R-Colo., and others were furious and demanded some fairness for their states as well. Hansen said, "After crafting an expedited solution for the Black Hills, opposing similar solutions for other vulnerable forests in the West would smack of hypocrisy." Indeed!
Arizona Gov. Jane Hull and Sen. Jon Kyl both reacted bitterly that environmental lawsuits continue to frustrate efforts to effectively manage Arizona forests, in spite of the evidence mechanical cutting and clearing, with or without a profit motive, needs to be done.
The Arizona Republic recounts that several weeks ago, Rep. Shadegg of Arizona proposed an amendment in the House that would prohibit citizen lawsuits from stopping a limited category of thinning projects. The vote was blocked by which political party? What a surprise.
Daschle's response to all this is typical Demo-spin: CYA. He insisted that the South Dakota exemption was a long-term negotiated policy change involving locals, the Sierra Club and "interested" parties. The record, however, indicates otherwise.
Considering aforementioned Sierra Club policy as stated on its websites, it was a mighty convenient "negotiation." Especially considering the fact that two months earlier, Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., had attempted to put together a bill on behalf of South Dakota's Black Hills very similar to Daschle's Deal.
Bill Harlan of the Rapid City Journal reports that early in 2002, months prior to the current spate of fires, Thune pushed a bill which offered an exception to NEPA for South Dakota. The Bush administration agreed to sign it but passage was stopped dead when Democrats, South Dakota's senators, Tom Dachle and Tim Johnson set up the usual roadblocks.
In spring 2002, Democrat Johnson regaled proponents of the Dakota exemption by insisting to Thune and South Dakota that environmental groups like the Sierra Club and senators from OUTSIDE South Dakota would put up a terrible fight to block the measure. Therefore, neither Johnson nor Daschle would support the Thune bill.
When the fires began in summer 2002, however, environmentalist opposition disappeared and Daschle and Johnson worked out a deal with them to give them a wish list while allowing logging as well as treatment of the pine beetle infestation. Magically, when Daschle and Johnson decided to move on the measure, opposition by these "other" mysterious senators disappeared as well.
Isn't it amazing what 5 million acres of forests going up in smoke will do to change stubborn, bought-and-paid-for green political hacks like Daschle and Johnson, especially when the forests in their state are at stake?
These green political hacks don't seem to care a fig that costs to fight fires and treat the areas in the burns have cost the taxpayer big bucks. According to Chief of the U.S. Forest Service Dale Bosworth, this year's fires cost taxpayers $325 million.
Meanwhile, Sierra Sue Happy (Sierra Club) and the usual green suspects scream like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs that they don't know what we are talking about when we mention the large numbers of lawsuits they institute to stop not only mechanical cutting, i.e. logging, but also a host of other clean-up and scrap-removal efforts.
In a recent editorial in the Denver Post, Al Knight, a senior member of the Post's editorial staff, commented on the sue-happy greens. Knight states: "As these issues have been aired, however, an important thing happened. Environmental groups went into a kind of 'Who, me?' act in which they sought to escape all responsibility for having stalled or prevented the U.S. Forest Service from carrying out a number of projects designed to reduce fire risk."
Knight continues, "Removing trees is also called logging.
"Logging, or tree removal, is what makes officers of environmental groups irritable. When they are irritable, they file administrative appeals and lawsuits. Out of 326 Forest Service decisions during the study period, 155 were appealed. In addition, 21 decisions that were initially appealed ultimately led to federal lawsuits. In the Rocky Mountain region, 11 percent of all decisions were appealed. In the Northern region, which includes Montana, 100 percent of the decisions were appealed."
But it never ceases to amaze me how cooperative greens become when their failed environmental policies bring down Armageddon on America's forests and natural resources.
Isn't it grand that the Democrats in Congress are forced to deal, at long last, with environmental reality.
Paul Bunyan was a legend, a myth, a kindly hero who did good things in building America. That cannot be said about the current spate of environmental lies, myths and half-truths promoted by America's spoiled, sue-happy greens and their friends in the Democratic Party.
Next time: More on Sierra Sue Happy (Sierra Club) teaching American kids to deconstruct and re-educate Paul Bunyan. The Tillamook fire in Oregon and its aftermath. In addition, Democrats get free issue ads paid for by the Sierra Club in least a dozen states. Plus, RINO Republicans providing aid and comfort to the mean green machine.
Check out my Web site at www.aldenchronicles.com. To get in touch with me, please contact me at alden@newsmax.com.
Understanding Sierra Sue Happy and Her Friends
NewsMax.com
Diane Alden
Aug. 28, 2002In the last essay, titled "Paul Bunyan Meets Sierra Sue Happy and the Democrats," we learned that Paul Bunyan, as well as many other American folk heroes, were being deconstructed and then reconstructed into politically correct social icons by leftist groups like the Sierra Club aka Sierra Sue Happy.
We found out that the Democratic Party has become the legislative arm of the radicalized environmental movement.
We learned that 6 million acres of Western forests have burned to the ground, some of it to bedrock. This will ensure that some of those forests may take generations to grow back. That is IF they EVER grow back without human intervention through replanting.
We also know it has cost at least $1.5 billion to fight or contain the fires this year. Never mind the other attendant monetary, emotional and environmental costs.
We learned that in the wildfires of the past 12 years or so, people have lost their homes, firefighters have died, critter habitat has been destroyed, and through it all groups like the Sierra Club think catastrophic wildfires are good things.
Also we find that the GAO recently reissued figures which showed that from 49 percent and up to 89 percent of approved federal logging or salvage has been stopped by green groups as they institute court cases against the government. Sierra Club being one of the most litigious groups. They have their own lawyers to keep fed and housed, what else would they be used for?
Up until a few weeks ago, Sierra Club websites were glorifying the wonders of catastrophic fires in the name of forest health. No matter that some of these fires are high intensity causing creeks to boil, species of fish to die off, mercury to be released into the watershed, erosion, INCALCULABLE riparian damage, loss of private and public lands for future recreational or aesthetic opportunities. But to Sierra Sue Happy and her lesser green cousins, natural is better even if "natural" means a virtual desert is created.
The grand dame of the environmental movement, the Sierra Club, is not the only leftist group that has taken on the task of collectivizing America by using an issue such as the environment, as a primary tool to deconstruct Western civilization and capitalism.
It is not the only group that litigates against sound forest management practices or "ecosystem" health. By the way, BPC(Before Political Correctness) we used to call ecosystems by their real names. That is – nature, the backcountry, pastures, mountains, creeks and streams or the northwoods.
The Sierra Club, however, is not the only group litigating to prevent timber sales for profit through salvage, thinning, cutting, and clearing woodie refuse. In our times, the profit motive which might allow loggers to cut or clear woods and make a buck doing it, is a mortal environmental sin.
Environmental groups hate profit except when it is profit coming their way. Invariably, environmental groups are using logging for profit as a perjorative akin to murdering a baby in its cradle. In public schools around the country logging and loggers are made to appear evil or BAD. Children write papers on the subject telling loggers to stop being so mean to the forests and go get other jobs. I know I have seen the essays and this is going on nation wide.
If they ever do agree to allow cutting and thinning they would prefer to PAY someone to do it rather then allow loggers to pay US to log federal forests which are badly managed and overcrowded in the extreme. That is not usually the fault of the Forest Service. Nope. Sierra Sue Happy is a demanding and sue happy mistress. She hates thinning pr cutting or hauling using mechanical means. Sierra Sue has even protested against using horses to haul logs from federal forests lest some Percheron crunch a decaying log and kill a termite. Some of her cohorts in the green movement don't even want helicopters lifting logs out. I suppose because it might stir an unnatural movement of air.
It is an ethical thing with Sierra Sue. She doesn not care for capitalism and considers it an environment destroying evil. That is unless you are an adverstiser in her glossy pricey magazines.
Even though capitalism provides her with funds and income through contributions, grants and taxes, that seems to cut no ice with Sierra Sue and friends. No social justice maven is Sierra Sue. She hates the profit motive and capitalism even when they give jobs to rural poor – good paying jobs.
Sierra always talks about the jobs that will result from not cutting trees. Tourism for instance. She prefers that high paying jobs in logging be replaced with those cleaning refuse in hotels or picking up yuppie detritus on hiking trails, or pumping gas for SUV driving soccer moms who come out to the woods twice a year to hug a tree. She prefers loggers take jobs driving a tour bus through limited access public parks at minimum wage.
She hates capitalism and the profit motive. That is EXCEPT when it comes to her well stuffed pocket book, her plush digs in San Francisco and Washington, DC. All of her good living and lifestyle courtesy of trial lawyers, her friends in congress, not to mention the federal courts.
Through a Green Glass Darkly
In the last essay, we learned that America's public schools are being used by groups like the Sierra Club to spread the green message. (A Luddite collectivist and culturally Marxist agenda and message.)
The Sierra Club is having a writing contest in which American school children are being asked to help Paul Bunyan recant his tree cutting ways. Paul will join the Sierra Club and will refuse to cut any trees at all. A folk hero deconstructed into a modern day politically correct nudge.
In light of this, and because the Sierra Club now litigates away any kind of common sense forest or environmental policy, we have renamed John Muir's creation – Sierra Sue Happy.
Sierra Sue Happy represents a kind of modern day folk anti-hero. Our society and government supports her using federal tax dollars and tax exemptions and grants. She gets a lot from suing. By no means does all of her money come from $10 contributions from armchair environmentalists in Connecticut and New Jersey.
Sierra Sue Happy is a 501(c)3 tax entity. That means she does not pay taxes on the millions upon millions of dollars she collects in contributions as well as government and foundation grants.
The 501 tax status also means Sierra Sue Happy and her cousins Willie Wildlife Fund, Newt Nature Conservancy, not to mention favorite companion Audie Audubon, are supposed to confine their deconstructing agenda and monetary contributions to green issues. They are not supposed to be promoting political candidates. The record shows that Sierra Sue and groups like her, have wandered far from fuddy-duddy old IRS rules for charitable or "educational" organizations supporting politicians.
The record also shows that most of our new folk heroes like Sierra Sue Happy and Willie Wildlife Fund give aid and comfort to leftist democrats. These include their favorite fuzzy wuzzy green politicos, Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and Maria Cantwell, D-Washal. Also acceptable to Sierra Sue Happy are South Dakota's Tim Johnson and Tom Daschle. In other words find any leftist/progressive/democrat running for office this election year, and Sierra Sue Happy is probably running ads suggesting that these fuzzy green political sympathizers are accommodating their green wish list – which they choose to call "issues."
Sierra Sue and friends plan to spend at least $2 million on behalf of House and Senate candidates in Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, Georgia, New Hampshire, Maine, South Dakota, and Iowa. Their political director, Margaret Conway states that the best hope for defending the environment lies with the U.S. House and the Senate." By that of course she means electing more democrats or dimwitted RINOs to office.
It should come as no surprise that several years ago The Wall Street Journal reported that in 1996 the Sierra Club used a 527 "Stealth PAC" to finance its issue ads on the environment. "We just use this as another tool," said Daniel Weiss, Sierra's political director at the time.
That is especially true if that leftist Democrat is running against a person who might actually believe in limited government or the Constitution. Particularly if that someone has discovered that the modern environmental movement does not always KNOW what is best for the environment. As it happens, that may or may NOT mean a Republican. That is because most Republicans are scared spitless of Sierra Sue's alter ego the mainstream media.
With a few exceptions, most Republicans don't want to appear to insult Sierra Sue lest they be branded as being for dirty air and dirtier water and the total destruction of every tree and critter on planet earth. Worst of all if a brave politician attempts to educate people about the leftist agenda behind the environmental movement they are branded as "mean-spirited" and Sierra Sue Happy renews her efforts to make sure they don't return to congress.
In a fit of self righteous pique, Sierra Sue Happy will stand with her hands on her hips and point to issue ads which compliment RINO Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine, or Chris Shays of Connecticut.
Turning on her expensive hiking booted heel and dropping her glossy magazine made from wood products, while tossing her ads for pricey Patagonia gear and eco-tourism to the Galapagos on the ground, Sierra Sue insists that she is merely educating the public. She won't tell you that by and large her issue ads on TV and radio and in print, support any leftist willing to go along with Sierra's collectivist agenda.
A reasonable person, however, has to give credit to Sierra Sue and Willie Wildlife Fund. They and their folk hero leftist cousins have been among the greatest builders of myth and legend in modern times.
Sierra Sue and her buds are strictly from the Frankfurt School of Social Theory. They found ways to use the media and ad campaigns to sell a new leftist vision and the myth that goes with it. The myth of a one size fits all policy on absolutely everything from the environment to education. Collectivism has come of age. It found THE issue to build utopia, the utopian man and society, and that issue was the environment.
Building Sierra Sue's Theme Park
At the 1992 RIO Conference and the upcoming Earth Summit, as well as collectivist covenants like the U.N. Treaty on Biodiversity, and U.N. Agenda 21, Desertification Treaty, and the sacred holy cow they call "sustainable development," our modern green folk heroes have found the way, the truth and the light. You will learn to your chagrin that it is their way or no way. They do not play well with others nor do they compromise on "issues." Their end game is to collectivize the world and get capitalists to pay for it.
If the Soviet communists couldn't conquer the entire world, if Sweden and Euro-socialist regimes are sinking into over-taxed decadence and decay, America's green collectivists seeks to show them and us how collectivizing should be done. They have been eminently successful in that regard.
Sierra Sue and company have out done any televangelist in collecting money and in influence peddling, changing vocabulary and thus changing the direction of the debate. They are past masters at demonization. They have found the way to demonize and marginalize opposition to the holy doctrines of Sierra Sue and company and they do it tax free.
The Christian Coalition lost its 501(c)3 status for supporting political candidates through passing out candidates' voting records on issues. Sierra Sue Happy certainly does the same kind of thing and has more money with which to do it.
Nonetheless, at least the Christian Coalition didn't take federal grants to promote its agenda. Sierra Sue and a dozen lesser green entities do just that.
But Sierra Sue's legendary untouchable status as a modern third rail folk hero keeps the IRS off her back. Just as the IRS stays away from folk hero and media darling the untouchable Reverend Jesse Jackson. Both of the legends survive and are beyond the law because they ARE mainstream media darlings. The media foams at the mouth protecting them from criticism and continues to do so. But so do their powerful democrat flunkies like Tom Daschle.
Talk about a failure of ethics? Sierra Sue sniffs and throws her blond curled head and says, "So what, I am special and so is my cause." In other words the ends justifies the means.
She will continue to be unethical. She will continue to sue to make a living suing the government and blackmailing business. For most of us, it would be highly unethical to take grants from the very agencies of government that we sue every chance we get. It would be extreme to play the virgin green queen when we take big bucks from Exxon or Enron.
Like Jesse Jackson, Sierra Sue Happy and Willie Wildlife and their friends, continue to intimidate by threatening lawsuits or media exposure when they are not given "contributions" to promote their latest myth. Name-calling is a primary tool in this effort. You can be forgiven if you are an axe murderer or suicide bomber, but God help you if you are labeled as anti-environment. This bunch are herders of multiple green sacred cows.
Sierra Sue can pay for her democratic friends because she has the bucks. She will be running "positive" television ads, shaped to local concerns and full of local images, and will lay out the records of Rep. Bill Luther, D-Minn, Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn.
Negative ads will tell voters to keep an eagle eye on nefarious conservatives like Republican Sens. Wayne Allard of Colorado and Gordon Smith of Oregon; Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Saxby Chambliss, South Dakota Senate candidate Rep. John Thune, and Iowa Reps. Greg Ganske and Tom Latham, Republicans running for Senate and for re-election, respectively. Only a religious or quasi-religious group could have that much clout, money and power and that is what Sierra Sue represents – secular religion.
One also has to ask, if Sierra Sue Happy and the rest of America' green folk heroes are not part of a religious movement, then why are these groups being included for more grants in the "Faith Initiatives" bill rolling through congress?
Perhaps we tax paying heathens should just join hands and say AMEN brother! Pass the collection plate – sock it to us and then sock it to us again!
Forget that for a moment. Conservative groups run ads which point to conservatives who support an agenda and issues dear to conservatives. There are other things Sierra Sue and her cousins, the American version of the Red Guard, are doing which are far more serious.
Paul Bunyan worked for a living. Sierra Sue Happy tells us what he did was BAD. Meanwhile, she and dozens like her, deconstruct American icons and institutions.
America's schools are responding and helping this leftward drift and the accompanying deconstruction of real heroes. The following comes from a school website in Pennsylvania, "You are a representative from the Sierra Club, a group that is trying to protect the environment. Write a letter to Paul that will try to convince him to stop cutting down all the trees in the wilderness. What ideas will help him be convinced that cutting is bad for the country? Make this a business letter at least a page in length."
Protecting the environment? Sierra Sue Happy? I don't think so. But since the Sierra Sue is the secular version of orthodoxy, like the Southern Baptists for instance, she and her information and motives are beyond being questioned by the government school system.
Sierra Sue and company have arrived. They sit in judgement on an American version of Mount Olympus. They have made themselves arbiters of national security matters as well.
Paul Bunyan was a legend. However, at least he never pretended to be God Almighty OR the supreme director of national public policy or the national security needs of the United States.
Who Needs Saddam or Suicide Bombers? We Have Sierra Sue and Willie Wildlife
Recently, journalist Michelle Malkin did a series of excellent articles on how goofball enviro policy holds our military hostage to the green dream. She states: "As I wrote on Tuesday, the House this week rejected a request by our armed forces to allow the Navy to conduct training exercises at sea without the constant threat of marine mammal "harassment" lawsuits. The military also faces opposition to a broader request to exempt some military training grounds from the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treat Act, which currently contains no exemption for national security."
In other words, our soldiers "must tiptoe around the habitats of desert tortoieses, and not step on plants which may or may not actually be endangered, refrain from " nighttime exercises, beach exercises, amphibious landings, and live-fire training exercises-lest they be sued by the nearest anti-military environmental group."
Keeping us hostage to corrupt Middle East oil fiefdoms, Sierra Sue was ever so proud when the bill to allow drilling in the mosquito infested bog area of the ANWR was defeated.
Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club stated, "The public said they want the Arctic Refuge protected for future generations, and their Senators heard them loud and clear." The public he is talking about must be planning to buy electric cars in the near future. This time several American unions complained about Sierra Sue's foolishness in putting the strong arm on Tom Daschle, the Dems and RINOs to prevent drilling in ANWR.
Pope thanked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., for his leadership on the issue, as well as Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Harry Reid, D-Nev.
When the irresponsible congress, especially the democrats and their RINO friends, watch as our military are brought home in body bags, will they connect any of it to inadequate training or military practice? Would they have the brains to associate their failure to reform or adopt common sense regulations as one of the causes? Do they give a damn that we are still in hock for oil needs to the likes of Saddam Hussein? I doubt it.
President Bush Deconstructs Green Destruction
Recently, President Bush went to Oregon and declared a new forest management policy. As he stood in the charred ruins of the worst fire in Oregon history (Over 400,000 acres) he tells the world that the hands off, "let it burn because it is natural" that created the blackened landscape, is flat dumb.
On a pile of debris which was still burning with dead and blackened trees, Bush said: "This is the second fire site I've been to this summer, and it's the same story. Had we properly managed our forests, the devastation caused would not have been nearly as severe, and it's a crying shame. ... What the critics need to do is come stand where I stand."
What the new policy will do, if the Democrats and RINOs don't prevent it, wil streamline review of the environmental effects of proposed logging and brush clearing.
Standards by which those proposals are approved will be changed.
Government agencies will be allowed to negotiate contracts giving companies the right to sell the wood products they harvest in exchange for removing them from the forest. (Profit motive and the screaming from Sierra Sue has started already.)
Make it harder for "environmental" groups to appeal plans for tree thinning and brush clearing.
In his speech, Bush also asked Congress to pass legislation to reduce frivolous lawsuits. Meanwhile, trial lawyers keep sending money to the democrats so unless democrats are defeated in significant numbers it will be Sierra Sue Happy writ large for ALL leftist causes. (Next up will be reparations for blacks and fast food lawsuits).
The myths Sierra Sue has created are predictable, intractable, uncompromising, and usually based on half-truths undergirding a collectivist agenda. Her suitors, the trial lawyers and Democrats will continue to pay for her agenda and enhance her myth.
Because American environmental policy is in the bad hands of zealots, federal politicians, and green bureaucrats, is it any wonder Americans continue to get corruption like the Canadian Lynx debacle, the phony spotted owl controversy, forests and lands that are mismanaged, and groups like the infamous case of the Klamath farmers put out of business by a fish that is not endangered. A fish that is being clubbed to death at one end of the state while greens and bureaucrats are destroying communities in the name of that fish on the other end of the state. Go Figure.
Meanwhile, the "good science" amendment to the Endangered Species Act is stalled. RINO John Warner and fuzzy wuzzy green maven Maria Cantwell have joined forces to enshrine Clinton's "roadless" initiative into permanent federal law. That will really help when MORE forests burn uncontrollably and it is doubly difficult to get into those areas. America burns and the lives and habitat of animals, fish and fowl, not to mention human beings are snuffed out thanks to idiotic legislation like the Clinton "roadless" initiative.
Draining Sierra Sue Happy's Swamp
Wildfires live or die in the land, fuel and weather that surround them. When there is no fuel there is no fire. We have to stop fueling Sierra Sue's fire. We have to drain her swamp.
We can't prevent individuals from contributing to her or groups like her. We can, however, insist that government does not give the Sierra Club, various wildlife groups, smaller front groups for radical animal rights or earth worshippers, the funds to litigate. Money is the fuel for these groups. Money and budgets and wars over influence have led to the failed forest policies and the catastrophic fire disasters of the last few years. Money and power and a type of unethical special privilege brought us the Canadian Lynx debacle and the stupidity of a non-endangered fish costing the Klamath farmers millions of dollars, not to mention their way of life.
Funding Sierra Sue Happy, Audie Audubon or Newt Wildlife Fund using taxpayer funds through grants is unethical and wrong. Their judgment on environmental matters has proved to be selective and geared to making the most money for themselves while taking on easy targets.
Go do a search and find out the last time Sierra Sue and her phalanx of lawyers went after a major polluter like the City of Portland, Oregon for instance. Or when have they sued the polluters of the Potomac River?
Never never forget Sierra Sue worked out a deal with Tom Daschle to exempt South Dakota's Black Hills from federal forest policy and lawsuits. Sierra Sue does not bite the sugar daddy that feeds her.
While we are at it, let's drain the sugar daddies' power, money and perks as well. That is a mighty big swamp they have and it may take years to drain it. We should begin in November by voting for conservatives who want a clean environment by using sensible environmental policy to accomplish that end.
PS – I have been a harsh critic of President Bush for not rescinding Clinton's executive orders re the environment. I have hit him for pandering to luddite greens when he as a farmer/rancher ought to know better. But his speech in Oregon about changing forest policy was dead on. I am hoping it was the equivalent to the 9.11 speech he gave on September 20th of last year. If it is I just may have to eat my criticism. In any event, watch congress this year. A bunch of really bad environmental law is about to go down. Some of it supported by RINOs. I am hoping GWB will not be one of them.
Check out my Web site at www.aldenchronicles.com. To get in touch with me, please contact me at alden@newsmax.com