Pacific Views

Bush's August Vacation in Oregon

Bush shows up in Oregon next Thursday and will spend lots of time telling us that he cares about our problems. (Of course, his biggest reason for visiting Oregon is to raise money for his warchest and to "sell" his environmental policies.) His talking points for Oregon will be all about selling his Healthy Forest Initiative. After reviewing the White House propaganda, if you still have questions about what's at stake, you can read Palamedes's analysis of the initiative. A quick summary of the issues follows:

• Bush's administration agrees that the century of stopping all fires were instrumental in creating the hazardorus conditions found in our forests today.
• They blame the environmentalists for the problem because they say there have been too many lawsuits (based on regulations) preventing logging which would have cleared the forests of the hazardous conditions.
• They say the US government cannot provide enough money to rectify this situation.
• They believe the only way for the US to solve this problem is to provide incentives to the timber companies to come in and clean up the forests.

First of all, let's look at these assertions one at a time.

• Environmentalists agree that the Smokey the Bear forest policy of suppressing all fires everywhere was wrong.
• Forest thinning projects rarely get challenged. The GAO report confirms that it is not lawsuits preventing necessary thinning. Removing regulations cannot help with this problem, but can make it easier to log in intact forests away from communities.
• Can the US afford to help fund the thinning efforts? With these folks at the helm, can we afford anything?
• They want to create a market to provide funds for this effort:

"We are hopeful with our programs that we can create an infrastructure and a market for these currently non-commercial trees so that the cost to the taxpayer can be offset. So when you ask about environmental groups claiming that this is about logging, they're just dead wrong." (Emphasis added)

It is definitely about the logging and selling out to the timber industry. Bush's stops are carefully orchestrated to pick the most extreme examples to sell his point. In Arizona his campaign dropped into the site of a severe fire earlier this year. The forest in this area did not just have a problem of overgrown brush close to communities, this forest was damaged by years of drought and massive insect invasion that killed a number of trees before the fire started. The extreme fire-danger that should have been addressed as soon as possible, but the funds for this were cut in the Bush budget.

The Pacific Northwest campaign stops will be picked up by the American taxpayer. The fact that Bush is showing up in Oregon indicates the campaign's belief that Oregon will once again be a battleground state. The regional blogosphere can help educate the voters by providing some tough questions for the Bush administration and some real facts concerning the Bush policies.

Posted by Mary at August 18, 2003 05:01 AM | TrackBack