Trump Turns Public Lands Over To Greedy Corporations

Republican Teddy Roosevelt is largely responsible for protecting many of our national resources and treasures -- and urged others who followed him in power to do the same. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude for that.

Sadly though, today's Republicans are not of the stature of Roosevelt. When they look at lands protected by the government, they don't see natural wonders belonging to all Americans. They see land that could be exploited for profit by greedy corporations (who will repay them with large campaign donations) -- and one of the worst of these is Donald Trump. Trump has single-handedly turned over large tracts of our public lands to greedy corporations.

The following is part of an article by Jenny Rowland for Think Progress:

Trump took an unprecedented step for a U.S. president in December — signing a proclamation that dramatically reduced the size of two national monuments. Bears Ears National Monument was cut by more than 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was reduced by half. This resulted in the largest elimination of protected areas in U.S. history. The move put tens of thousands of Native American sacred sites at risk, along with key wildlife habitat, and areas used for outdoor recreation.

While the longer-term fate of Trump’s likely illegal action will play out in the courts, also buried in his December proclamation was a provision that on February 2, 2018, the areas excluded from the monuments would become open to private mineral companies to begin staking mining and drilling claims. . . .

Staking a mining claim on public lands gives an individual or company the exclusive right to extract minerals from a specific area of that land. Under the nearly 150-year-old 1872 Mining Law, staking a claim still involves literally putting stakes into the ground at the four corners of the boundary of your claim. This is then followed up within 90 days by recording the claim with the local BLM office and paying a modest annual fee. . . .

Bears Ears in particular, has proven deposits of uranium and other minerals within it’s original boundaries. One company, Energy Fuels Resources, owns and operates a uranium mine just outside the boundaries of the original monument. In May, the company submitted a letter to Interior requesting reductions to the monument and noted “there are also many other known uranium and vanadium deposits located within the [original boundaries] that could provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future.”. . .

The potential destruction to Bears Ears is also gaining attention from conservation observers outside of the U.S.; earlier this week an arm of the United Nations asked the president to reverse his action, writing that the reduction to Bears Ears could cause irreparable damage to historical artifacts. . . .

While the national monuments in Utah face imminent harm, they are not the only public lands currently at risk. The Trump administration’s national monument report includes plans to alter at least eight additional monuments that range from allowing logging in Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters, to allowing commercial fishing in the Pacific Remote Islands.

The Official Park Service Photos Embarrassing For Trump

Right after the inauguration, the mainstream media posted their photos of the crowds at the Obama and Trump inaugurations -- and those photos showed a much larger crowd had turned out for Obama's inauguration. Those photos caused our narcissist-in-chief to blow a fuse, lose his cool, and throw a tantrum. He could not accept the truth.

He was convinced that the media was lying, and his crowds were really larger. So, he ordered the National Park Service to release their own official government photos of the crowd sizes. The NPS has now released those photos, and they are pictured above.

Obama's crowd is on the left, and Trump's is on the right. Both were taken shortly before the candidates were sworn in -- and to add to Trump's embarrassment, the Obama photo was taken an hour earlier than the Trump photo (so the Obama crowd probably grew even larger).

Our loser-in-chief doesn't know when to quit. If anything, the official government photos look even worse than the media photos.

Polluting Our National Parks

In this country, we refuse to make the corporations stop their polluting. The bottom line has become more important than the environment or the health of our citizens, so we continue to allow them to pollute our soil, our water, and our air. And now the Republicans want to defund the Environmental Protection Agency to further inhibit it from making these corporations (especially energy, gas, and oil companies) follow the law and clean up their act.

This has been a problem in too many of our cities for quite a while, but now it is even starting to affect areas that we consider to be pristine -- like out national parks. There are at least seven of our treasured national parks that had smog and/or ozone levels that were considered by the EPA to be dangerous last year. Here are the seven parks where the pollution was the worst (ranked from worst to less bad):

1. Sequoia National Park
2. Joshua Tree National Park
3. Great Smokey Mountains National Park
4. Yosemite National Park
5. Rocky Mountain National Park
6. Big Bend National Park
7. Mojave National Preserve

NOTE -- A lot of the park pollution is due to automobiles (which goes back to the oil companies and their lobbying for carbon-based fuels).

A Symbol For Our Economic & Ecological Savagery

The nation's official christmas tree is no more. High winds in the Washington, D.C. area snapped the tree's trunk and toppled it (see picture above). Fortunately, no one was in the area when the tree fell.

The tradition of the president lighting a national christmas tree started in 1923, when President Calvin Coolidge performed the ceremony. The tree that was felled was planted in 1978 and first lit officially by President Carter. The National Park Service is currently investigating getting a replacement tree (if they have the money after Republicans finish slashing the federal budget).

My first thought upon hearing the tree had been toppled by bad weather was that this is a perfect symbol for what politicians are currently doing to our economy and our environment. In the last few years, our government (mainly Republicans) have instituted policies that created the widest gaps between the rich and poor in wealth and income since before the Great Depression. They then gave the rich massive tax cuts, continued enormous corporate subsidies, and engaged in two unnecessary and illegal wars. And the answer to the problems these actions caused (the recession) is to cut the programs that help ordinary Americans the most.

Add to this the fact that the government has failed to do anything to halt global climate change, and the Republican House has slashed funds for the EPA and banned it from regulating emissions of any kind. It seems obvious that the government is determined to destroy both our economy and our environment.

Maybe knocking down the tree was Mother Nature's way of showing her disgust. Why should a nation so bent on destroying itself have need for any national traditions -- of christmas or anything else?

Is Mojave Cross Constitutional ?

An 8 foot cross has stood atop Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve since 1934. It was supposedly erected to honor America's soldiers in World War I. But is it really proper to erect a religious symbol in a National Preserve or Park, especially since the Park Service turned down a request to erect a Buddhist monument nearby?

That is the question that was being discussed by the United States Supreme Court yesterday. A former National Park Service employee felt it was inappropriate for the National Preserve to favor one religion over others, and took the matter to court. A federal judge and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the display was unconstitutional, and the government appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Obama administration supports leaving the cross in the park. As much as I respect President Obama, I have to disagree with him on this one. I have no problem with a memorial honoring World War I soldiers being in the preserve, but why does it have to be a christian symbol (and the cross is recognized worldwide as a christian symbol).

Christians would be opposed to the memorial being a religious symbol from any other religion, so I really don't understand why they think it's OK to force their own symbol on Americans who believe in other religions. Personally, as an atheist, I don't believe symbols of any religion should be placed on government land.

In an attempt to do an end run around the Constitution, the National Preserve has transferred ownership of the cross and the bit of land underneath it to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). This is not real ownership, because the VFW can't sell the land and if they remove or fail to provide upkeep on the cross, the land will revert back to the National Preserve.

The ACLU argued that the cross is the predominant symbol of christianity and should not be treated as a single, favored religious symbol. Judge Scalia tried to argue that the cross didn't just represent christian soldiers, but was a "common symbol" to honor war dead.

That's a ridiculous argument. One look at national cemeteries for war dead shows that crosses are used for christian dead, while other symbols are used for those of a different faith. There is even a designated symbol for atheists.

No matter how long the cross has stood in the Mojave National Preserve, it should be removed. Allowing only a christian symbol amount to government designating a favorite or "official" religion, and that is unconstitutional.

Americans practice many faiths, and many practice no religion at all. Their tax money helps support the National Park System, and they should not be forced to support someone else's religion.

Cornyn Wants Guns In National Parks

A few years ago, I made a trip to the Banff National Park in Canada. As with many national parks both here and in Canada, it was a beautiful place. At one point, we had to stop and wait for about 15 minutes until a group of mountain goats decided they wanted to get out of the middle of the road. A little further along, a moose emerged from the forest and loped along beside our car for about a quarter mile until he got bored and disappeared back into the foliage.

These were magical experiences and made our visit to the area much better. The animals in the park were obviously not afraid of humans, and therefore did not try to hide from them.

The reason for this is because the government there is very serious about keeping guns out of their parks. Guns must not only be unloaded and packed away, but they are put in a bag with a special seal. If the seal is broken when you leave the park, you are in a lot of trouble. They do this to protect the animals and make the park experience better for visitors.

Although they don't go to those lengths, many U.S. National Parks also prohibit guns. But our Texas senators, Cornyn and Hutchison, would like to change that. They want to change the law to allow Americans to carry firearms into our National Parks. Fearing a possible Democratic landslide in the coming election, they are trying to save themselves by pandering to the large number of gun owners.

Now I am not one of those who think we should outlaw gun ownership. I can read, and I know the Constitution guarantees the right of the people to own and bear arms. But allowing guns in our National Parks is just a very bad idea.

There are too many nuts among us that would think it funny to use protected animals as target practice. They would not only drive the animals away and ruin the park experience for everyone, but they would make a park visit much more dangerous. We'd have to worry about dodging stray bullets because some jerk thought it was cool to take potshots at a park animal.

There is no legitimate reason to allow guns inside our National Parks. This is just one more reason we must see that Cornyn is defeated in the upcoming election.