Selling our national parks is like selling your wedding ring for heroin.

[brainshrub]

www.brainshrub.com/heroin-fix

Some of the saddest stories ever told are by people recovering from drug abuse. What is most gut-wrenching about these cautionary tales of pain and woe are what the addicts themselves regret the most from their experience. It's not the years of physical discomfort, the damage done to their bodies or the money wasted that makes them shed the bitterest tears: It's the pain and guilt they feel for the people they've alienated.

Think about it. You can get addicted to Meth and go from this:

to this
and yet, your biggest regret will be how you hurt the people closest to you.

Just as an addict is blinded to the pain he causes others in his desire for more narcotics, most Americans are blinded to the problems we are giving our children in the quest for unlimited consumption. So great is this addiction, that many citizens ignore what politicians are doing to our open spaces at the behest of oil companies.

A good example of this druggie world-view is represented by Republican congressman Richard Pombo of the 11th district in California. Here is a man so in love with short-term development and cheap oil, that he is willing to sell your heritage to the highest bidder.

Representative Pombo, the chairman of the natural resources committee, drafted legislation that proposes auctioning off 15 national parks to developers, and turning the remaining ones into commercial billboards by selling the naming rights to visitors centers and trails. (I.E.: Re-naming the "Appalachian Trail" to "The Gatorade Trail.")

This proposal was written to threaten lawmakers into supporting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It's as if Pombo is saying "You let us drill for oil in ANWR, or we sell the parks."

Now I ask you; Do you want to deny your children this:



so that you can keep building this?:



Republicans like Richard Pombo love to talk about their own property-rights, but they ignore the property rights of generations still to come. These parks are not ours to auction off like a collectible figurine on ebay. They belong to our children. Selling the parks, or the naming rights, to corporations is like selling your wedding-ring for a heroin fix.

Pro-corporate conservatives are thinking like drug addicts if they believe that drilling in ANWR will lower fuel prices or save our national parks. The solution is to start weaning ourselves off of our collective addiction to petroleum and support programs that conserve what we have left for our children.

Pombo's threat to sell the national parks in order to make drilling in ANWR politically feasible is a breach of trust between generations. It's like a parent risking his teenagers trust by sneaking into his son's wallet for drug money.

As bad as our economy will be when Peak Oil catches up with us, it won't be nearly as painful as explaining to our grandkids why they can't have access to open spaces because you wanted a to continue driving an SUV.

Americans must stop hurting the people we love the most before it's to late.

www.brainshrub.com/heroin-fix

[RaulGroom]

1. Actually, it's worse

At least if I sell my wedding ring for heroin I get to be all smacked-out for a couple of hours. The selling of our national parks does me no good at all.

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. If there is an organization who is actively fighting these people,

I don't know who it is.

[brainshrub]

3. There people are the ones fighting back:

http://www.npca.org/parks4sale/

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. I couldn't find a petition on their webpage.

You'd think there would be one.

[phantom power]

5. In other news...

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. (AP) -- The ruddy slopes of 12,392-foot Mount Emmons loom over this town, drawing hikers, backcountry skiers and snowshoers. But to residents such as Jim Starr, they also stand for what is wrong with the nation's antiquated mining laws.

Those laws allowed the Bush administration to sell 155 acres of public land on the "Red Lady" to a mining company for less than $900. The land has deposits of molybdenum, a gray metal used to make steel, alloys and lubricants.

Congress has made numerous efforts to change the law, and not even the National Mining Association is a vigorous defender. Spokeswoman Carol Raulston said the trade group would support updating the law so companies pay "fair market value" for patents.

But advocates of overhauling the law have been thwarted by those resisting an end to the free-access approach to public lands upon which the nation was built.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=33175&mesg_id=33175

[blindpig]

6. Richard Pombo

is as wretched a creature as walks the Earth. No doubt his antipathy towards any and all environmental regulation stems from his families involvement in real estate. He was probably "robbed" of the profits he "deserved" by restrictions imposed to save some "insignificant" species.

This piece of shit is a one man wrecking crew, what with the ESA, National Parks and ANWR all on his plate. He makes James Watt look like a Boy Scout. He is the undisguised face of greed. I'm surprised he even bothers with the bu$hist subterfuge of pretending that his bill will improve the ESA.

Can anyone tell me who is running against this scumbag next year? I wish to send that person money, garlic, silver bullets, a cross, whatever it takes.

Though all of my reps are whores I will hammer Lindsey Graham when this abomination comes to the senate next year. He likes to maintain the illusion of being independent every once in a while.

[Carla in Ca]

7. I too have been watching the antics

of this evil man...but so have the Dems. I posted this earlier.
<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2168299>

Maybe it at least will slow him down a little until we can defeat him.