Dear Mark,
I’m Preston Elliott, and I’ve just signed on as Jon’s campaign manager. I would tell you a little more about myself, but this just hit my inbox:
Denny Rehberg to Announce Senate Bid Saturday – Roll Call, 1.31.11
Our race is now officially underway — please consider a secure online donation to show our new opponent that we’re ready for a tough campaign!
Oh, I know, progressives are trembling in their boots, and soon they’ll be saying “Yeah, Jon Tester ain’t so hot, but he’s better than Denny!!!
Bad legislation has a chance of passage because it is carried by a Democrat, and not in spite of Democrats. Triangulation is worse than having Republicans in office. Republicans create their own opposition. Triangulators deliberately undermine their own base.
Go Denny! Montana Democrats need a long cold shower.
Piece of Mindful 
Will a race like this – two neoliberal, authoritrian conservatives – raise participation? Yawn! Over 100,000 eligible Montanans did not register, or vote in the 2010 non-presidential race? In a close race, less than 25% of eligible voters could select our next senator. I think Iraq does better, ink-stained fingers and all.
What has Tester done for Montana that Burns did not do with a lot less opacity, deception, and acrimony? If nothing else, Rehberg is predictable.
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I would agree except or one thing: social security. The assualt will be massive, and I hope that at least Tester will fight for that. If not, then ho hum, Denny’s the one, as in it doesn’t really matter. I would have hoped that people in this country had suffered enough to figure things out by now, but now I’m not sure they ever will. They’re simply too stupid.
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Placing faith in Democrats is futile. The only way to save Social Security is to organize behind it and outside the parties, and apply popular pressure to both. They are, after all, different heads of the same beast.
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I used to think non-voters were stupid. Now I think they know they’ve got nowhere to turn. It’s all authoritarian-state/corporate, all of the time. Both parties have eliminated any competition on the ballot. The media, dependent on campaign cash, ignores and marginalizes any challengers without wads of ad money. Non-party independents (once called citizens) need signatures over 15,000 signatures to get a candidate line on the ballot. A new party needs 5,000, or over 5% of the total votes cast for the previous winner to secure a ballot line in November. No such barriers for Rs and Ds. The question, it seems to me, is not whom is stupid? But rather, what’s stupid, and why?
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“Had Dennis Rehberg come forth with [the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act], progressives and Democrats would have rightly condemned it as a massive sellout to industry in the name of jobs that will never be.”
Mark: So true and so sad. The same exact observation could be made with Tester (and Baucus’) effort to just legislate species off the Endangered Species List. If it was Burns trying to legislate wolves off the ES List, Dems would be…well, howling!
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Here’s some more info on FJRA:
Senator Tester’s FJRA bill would have members of Congress mandating how and where logging takes place in our forests; would turn some of Montana’s federal wildlands (including Wilderness Study Areas protected by Sen Metcalf) into permanent motorized recreation areas; would allow motors and other non-compatible uses in Wilderness and would cause negative impacts to the Forest Service budgets in our region.
Below are a few very specific, substantive concerns with the FJRA. Notice how bill supporters don’t seem to talk very much about these specifics.
Take, for example, the 229,710 acre West Pioneers Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRA), which includes the 151,000 acre Metcalf Wilderness Study Area (WSA). What Sen Tester would do is turn 129,252 acres of this IRA into a permanent, motorized Recreation Management Areas (RMA). Not even the “Beaverhead Partnership” supported this. Seriously, do we really want politicians ignoring the USFS’s travel plans to just legislate where they want motorized recreation permanently permitted? Of course, our recommendation would be to designate the entire 151,000 acre Metcalf WSA as Wilderness and eliminate the permanently motorized RMA, returning the management of that area to USFS travel planning, where it belongs.
Or take, for example, what Tester wants to do to the West Big Hole IRA, a 213,987 acre area along the crest of the continental divide that provides linkages and connectivity between the Greater Yellowstone area and forests to the west and north. Sen Tester would turn just 44,084 acres of this IRA into two small, far-apart Wilderness Areas while turning much of the IRA into a single, large, permanent, motorized National Recreation Area (NRA) totaling 94,237 acres. The large NRA would be twice as large as the two proposed Wilderness areas together and access to these two proposed Wilderness areas would be forced to use the motorized NRA trails. Again, this extreme move by Senator Tester wasn’t even supported by the “Beaverhead Partnership” in their original proposal.
Sec. 202(f) of Tester’s bill (concerning access to private property) attempts to redefine the Wilderness Act by stating the language in this section is “in accordance with section 5(a) of the Wilderness Act” when in fact it is not. The Wilderness Act provides for adequate access to private lands or, where there is a conflict between protecting the Wilderness and allowing access, the Wilderness Act allows the Secretary to offer a land exchange instead of access. It is a carefully crafted provision designed to ensure that the Wilderness would be protected from harm.
Tester’s FJRA undermines this protection in two ways. First, it strips away the provision that allows the Secretary to offer an exchange. Second, it requires that the access, in addition to being “adequate,” shall “ensure the reasonable use and enjoyment of the property by the owner.” If the owner can make the case that her reasonable use and enjoyment requires a road to be built to the private land, then the Wildernesses in the bill could be roaded. This gives the owners of private land within Wilderness more access rights than they hold on other national forest lands.
As written, the FJRA would grandfather the terms of existing outfitter permits without further analysis. Limitations and safeguards in the Wilderness Act would not apply to these permits, further compromising wilderness management. Moreover, if any of the existing commercial uses include motor vehicles, motorized equipment, or other nonconforming uses, they would also be grandfathered into Wilderness.
Those are just a few examples contained in the bill. I can provide more examples if anyone likes.
The undeniable facts are that over the past two year many Montanans – as well as Americans – have expressed serious, substantive concerns with Senator Tester’s FJRA. Concerns and opposition has come from not only the 50 plus conservation organizations (including 16 Montana organizations) that make up the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, but also conservation groups such as the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility – some of the most respected environmental groups in our nation. Concerns have also been expressed publicly from some of the former Chiefs of the Forest Service and a host of former Forest Service supervisors and district rangers.
Senator Tester and the “collaborators” like to say this is a jobs bill for the timber industry, but new home construction in America is down 70% and overall US wood consumption is down 50%.
These “collaborators” also give the impression that we need Tester’s bill to jump-start logging or return “balance” to national forest management. They will often say Tester’s bill gives the Forest Service the “tools they need to manage our forests.” In truth, these folks know they are being completely dishonest because they should know that the Forest Service ended 2009 with more timber volume already under contract to loggers and mills in our region than any point in the last decade. And if these folks actually paid attention to national forest management in our region, they’d also know that the Forest Service in Montana also has more logging, thinning, fuel reduction and restoration projects in the pipeline than at any point in recent memory. The Forest Service has all the tools they need. What’s missing is a market for wood and paper products and funding from Congress to complete needed restoration work.
In the future, let’s hope we get more substance and less shallow rhetoric from these Tester bill “collaborators.” The future of America’s national forest legacy is much more important than blindly supporting some politician who apparently thinks the best way to manage America’s public lands is through mandates and interference from Congress.
P.S. The Tester bill cheerleaders are also misleading the public about the supposed support they have in Montana. See this article for an in-depth look at their dishonesty: http://leftinthewest.com/diary/4521/fact-checking-the-fjra-poll-numbers
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Matt-can you put all that on a bumper sticker?
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These same “collaborators” rode Sen. Melcher all the way back to Montana in 1988, and are still complaining about Reagan’s pocket-veto of his equally hideous “wilderness” bull. Deja’ vu?
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We’ve seen that picture before.
With bloodshot eyes.
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Yes, but there is nothing scarier than a man in a cowboy hat!
Oooh, the fear, the fear….
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Tester is certainly no better than Rehberg. we can count on what Rehberg will do – i didn’t expect Jon bouy One Term Tester to fund the Illegal Wars and Occupations 3 times so far. That’s why i cannot vote for this Neo-lib tool and Baucus wana be.
…now he’s on the Banking Industry Payroll. Tester is a Pig
Rehberg true to lying Repug Form …anti-pork and earmark drones, Rehberg takes the Kings seat again this 2010 season for the most Earmarks of all Cong Critters, for the Welfare State of Montana…(where only 1 in 9 make a living wage – We are 49th on the wage scale – up from 50th for the last 10 years).
Rehberg brought in considerably more Pork from the US taxpayers than any other Cong Critter!
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This “earmark” argument interests me. First of all I’m thinking representatives from large geographical states with expanses of public land would have an better opportunity to take advantage of additional spending projects.
Keep in mind that besides Alaska, Denny’s district has no other match in physical size.
More importunately tho, if MT had two representatives, like in the past, he’d be considered frugal.
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I regard earmarks as a classic “wedge” issue, used to manipulate voters but having no impact on public policy. Like abortion, guns, mosques and immigration, earmarks are not something that people in power care about.
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Better that Montana get the Earmark money than the Executive Branch ! ObamanationINC would use it to go after Wikileaks.
Earmarks are funny… let’s say you garnered the money/earmark for a specific High Way project… say it’s High Way 86 and you made a mistake and it’s really Hwy 68 – The money can’t be spent. Many states have big bucks tied up in administrative Catch 22’s.
I have mixed feelings about earmarks. Repugs would say its redistribution of wealth pigs that they are… the Wealth was already Redistributed thru No Taxes on the Rich/Subsidies and De-Regulation…so Earmarks are more than deserved … i just wish it Taxing the Rich to the Max; Taxing the Absentee Landlords especially in MT, till they end the land grab/collateral –
I would Love to see Banking, Big AG, Energy, Health Care and Transportation Nationalized… end the cap on Soc Sec = Debt gone and class disparities Gone.
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