Another “frivolous” lawsuit

Environmental groups (real ones, anyway) are often criticized for excessively engaging in lawsuits. The logging industry has engaged the PR industry to defend them, generating talking points such as calling the lawsuits “frivolous” and even painting environmental groups as racketeers. Behind the scenes they no doubt talk a different line … lawsuits force industry to follow the law, and are a damned nuisance.

I worked for many years in the environmental movement in Montana. The group I worked with, Montana Wilderness Association, is now a full-fledged industry front group. They might have been so in the 1990s too, when I was with them, but they had very little money. That is usually a sign of a genuine environmental group. These days their money rolls in from trusts and foundations and they are bloated with excessive staff while “collaborating” with industry. They are phonies.

Map

What triggered this was a lawsuit against the US Forest Service to stop a large logging project north of Hebgen Lake on the border of Yellowstone National Park.(The red arrow points at Hebgen, and the logging project would be north and east of it.)

Read about it here, and be patient – the newspaper in question will gray out the article and ask some intrusive questions, but allows “I prefer not to answer” so that if you give that answer enough times they back off and let you read the article.

The problem activists face is what to do when government agencies are involved in law breaking activity. Who do you report it to? Congress is bought. News outlets get a quote from both sides and move on. There is really only one resort – sue the bastards.

Environmental groups have limited resources and cannot afford to be lawsuit-happy. They have to make the most of their resources, and so are careful in selecting targets for suits. For that reason, they usually win. That too is a behind-the-scenes reason why industry hire PR agencies to discredit anyone suing the government for bad behavior. Industry generally loses these lawsuits.

They also attempt, when they write laws, to make lawsuits illegal, usually by feigning some kind of emergency, as in Salvage Logging riders or claims to be acting to save “forest health,” a PR-generated buzzword. It’s all a ruse. The logging industry cares about the health of our forests as much as Hannibal Lecter for his victims. They need to eat, you see.

13 thoughts on “Another “frivolous” lawsuit

  1. https://theintercept.com/2017/07/26/chemical-industry-herbicide-poison-papers/

    I discovered this when it was all placed online last July…not sure if I shared

    I highly recommend Carol Van Strum’s “A Bitter Fog” . She wrote it in the 80’s but it is now available as an ebook on Amazon….think it’s free reading if you are a “kindle unlimited” member and only $5 if not…..very eye opening. Took place in Oregon and will make your blood boil….the havoc reeked by these poisons is astounding…..more so than we think

    here is the amazon item # in case you are interested….. B00PZGSXAI

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    1. Glad to have you aboard, again, Annette. We’ve been through a bit of a rough patch and I hope the result is that our remaning commenters are, like you, thoughtful and insightful and without agenda.

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      1. Thank you Mark….I’ve been here, reading articles, just haven’t commented much lately….looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I highly recommend the book for complete background. Carol Van Strum and her family moved to this beautiful pristine forest so she could finish her botany thesis. This was rough country, logging operations with neighbors miles apart and most of them didn’t know each other because of the conditions of the roads. The poison spraying had formerly been by hand, along roadsides with canisters. Carol’s children were playing at a nearby lake when out of nowhere this huge helicopter came along and sprayed everything in it’s path, including Van Sturm’s children. This type thing was happening all over the area, several pregnant women had miscarriages…babies were being born with deformities….but this spread out community had no idea of the magnitude of what was happening not just to them, but to neighbors. There was a journalist that wrote about one of the instances of miscarriage or birth defect and it wound up in a local paper…..the community was finally aware that something was very wrong and that is when they came together to try to fight what was happening. I read the book last August and what I just wrote is from memory, but the book outlines what these awful poisons do and how they work…not just to kill weeds…and the “poison papers” are court and legal documents that outline the collusion between numerous alphabet agencies to protect the chemical companies. This all took place in the mid-70’s….her book was written in the early 80’s. I found it to be an extremely fast read…my 1st husband was a Vietnam vet and he was harmed by “agent orange”. This fact, along with what Round-up is doing to our food supply is something everyone should be aware of….IMHO.

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  2. Anyone in Missoula today can watch live the continuation of another “frivolous” lawsuit (Stonewall: http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/judge-issues-injunction-for-lincoln-area-timber-project/article_7e0e525b-ad72-5279-8fbc-3c318e8c6186.html) against the USFS being held in Federal District Judge Christensen’s courtroom. The government wants to skirt long-standing procedural laws so it won’t have to withdraw its original decision, suspend timber contracts or pay opposing attorneys who worked to force them to follow the law.

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  3. Or, one might want to catch the continuation of the lawsuit the “Democratic” Party filed to remove Green Party candidates from the 2018 election. http://mtpr.org/post/montana-dems-lawsuit-against-green-party-back-court-thursday The show-cause hearing for preliminary injunction will likely conclude Thursday, May 24 in state district court in Helena. Whatever the outcome in district court, this case will surely be appealed to the Montana Supreme Court, heavily stacked with Democrats in black robes. Democracy, indeed.

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    1. “Political analysts say the Green Party’s appearance on the ballot this November could peel off harder left leaning voters from the Democratic Party’s base, which could place further vulnerability on U.S. Senator Jon Tester’s bid for reelection.”

      This business about the Democrats offering an alternative to Republicans is a hideous lie. They use different talking points, they construct a different-looking voting record (most congressional votes are throwaway anyway), but are otherwise interchangeable.

      Then there were photos of Tester hopping on his tractor and putting on his farmer’s mask to kick off his reelection bid. His supporters eat it up! The guys does not know what end of a shovel to use.

      By the way, Tester’s mother was a Pearson (as in Drew, Lester?) and her genealogy is scrubbed. On his father’s side, he goes back to the British peerage. His land was inherited … landed gentry, like Baucus before him.

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  4. Another fake school shooting in Texas.

    These things are getting old and boring. I wash the TPTB would switch to something else. It really shows a lack of creativity among the TPTB’ers.

    To all of the spooks/agents/TPTB’ers/Peerage people/Eskimos/whoever, etc. that monitor this blog and are involved in these “operations,” please be more creative and entertaining.

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  5. “I remember one day around or before 1990 sitting on a couch reading, and realizing that the Soviet threat was fake.”

    @Mark: Can you elaborate here? Nuclear war propaganda was still pretty heavy in the 80’s (With the film: “The Day after” and such). The pre-internet time was fairly difficult to find information countering the nuclear weapons psyop I think, so I’m intrigued as to how you came around to your thinking at that time.

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