from Sipsey Street Irregulars
What a Lone Voice in the Wilderness Sounds Like: The Old Guide versus Leviathan's Environmental Collective.
Federal "Listening Session"
September 2, 2010
Bangor, Maine
The Old Guide
Welcome to Maine. Your announcement said you come to listen. Thank you for your time.
• What Works? – Please share your thoughts and ideas on effective strategies for conservation, recreation, and reconnecting people to the outdoors?
You ask what works. Private ownership works. The reason the environmental industry likes Maine so much is that we private landowners have taken such good care of it for the last four centuries. We are still taking good care of it. However, in my lifetime we have lost great amounts of freedom. We used to be able to build a boathouse IN the lake. Boathouses didn't hurt the lakes at all and the fishing was better. We had a spruce budworm epidemic a quarter century ago. We needed to salvage large amounts of dead and dying trees. The environmental industry used that as an opportunity to attack Maine's landowners, large and small. A photo appeared in our newspapers showing a vast clear cut. The photo was taken in Siberia. It leads penthouse environmentalists in Boston to think our forests are gone.
In 1940 Maine had about 6,250,000 acres of pasture and cultivated ground. Today we have just over a million. In my lifetime Maine has gained an average of 77,000 acres a year of forest. Yes, gained. That is over three townships every year. Our forests are not gone. Those who say we are losing our forests simply lie or are ignorant of the truth. Our forests are not "fragmented". We don't need "wolf routes" to reconnect our forests. The addition of three townships of forest each year has created a huge contiguous forest and the greatest new carbon sequestration in the world. We private landowners did that.
• Challenges – What obstacles exist to achieve your goals for conservation, recreation, or reconnecting people to the outdoors?
The obstacles are many, but the biggest obstacle we face is LURC and the rules they invent. No other state has over half its land governed by an unelected bunch of state functionaries, accountable to no-one. We don't get to vote on these people or the rules they dream up to control us. They just impose them.
You folks are all high enough in the administration to realize there are preparations and contingency plans being made in the event of civil strife in our country. Just last Sunday your boss, President Obama spoke to the people of New Orleans and honored them for their perseverance. We too have persevered. We have been under a regime of discrimination, oppression and rural cleansing for four decades. Just prior to April 19,1775 the Crown imposed such rules on Americans. Those rules were called "The Intolerable Acts". Our forefathers fought a war over them. Now, 235 years later, we have new intolerable acts. At a state level listening session an employee of LURC asked if I thought we could experience civil strife in our country. He was too young to remember Detroit, South Watts and Atlanta in 1968. I answered him with a question; If we did have civil strife in Maine, where would the members of LURC go? I say these things because I was born before WWII and actually remember freedom. We want it back. We are Americans. WILL persevere.
• Tools – What additional tools and resources would help your efforts be even more successful?
Everybody likes clean air and clean water. Those are not issues. The real issue in Maine is a vicious agenda of rural cleansing. The tools and resources we could use are a state government that encourages economic growth instead of stifling growth. Economic growth brings prosperity. The environmental industry calls growth something else. They call it sprawl. They don't like growth or prosperity.
• Federal Government Role – How can the federal government be a more effective partner in helping to achieve conservation, recreation and reconnecting people to the outdoors?
We don't need to be reconnected to the outdoors. We are an outdoor people and have been connected to the outdoors all our lives - for many generations. We could, however, use a little help building more recreational trails for snowmobiles and ATVs. They are an important part of our economy since so much manufacturing has left and the recreational sector could use a little stimulus money. It's our money after all. Aside from that we don't need any federal involvement. Oh, and we'd like the piece of the White Mountain National Forest in Maine back. You could auction it off and use the proceeds for snowmobile and ATV trails.
Remember who we are. We are freedom loving Americans. Many of us have fought for freedom in several countries. As Lord Percy said in his report back to England after the battles of Lexington and Concord, "They are wise in the ways of the woods and they know what they are about." We still know what we are about today. We know who you are. Remember who we are, freedom loving Americans. It is in your best interest.
End of presentation.
We have been led down the road by the environmental industry for years and following Chairman Mao's tenets of two steps forward, one step back. We are supposed to be thankful when they don't take as much from us as they first threatened. That is the behavior of a childish fraternity pledge. not a freedom-loving American.
I don't buy into that. You should have seen the shock when I advocated building boathouses in the lakes and when I said we wanted that portion of the White Mountain National Forest in Maine back. Those comments were what made the administration leaders want to talk with me in the lobby when it was all over. I guess the small bunch at the New Hampshire session ten days ago was more docile.
I tell you, there were 15 people on the opposite side of the large round table across from my side and I made eye contact with most. Their mouths were so wide open in astonishment they looked like a bunch of guppies at feeding time. They had never heard such ideas.
No name calling. No histrionics, just facts.
The Old Guide
...We need a little of this common sense here in Vermont. Then maybe EVERYONE could enjoy the woods, not just the fit, young and healthy. Of course, that is to much to ask of people who view humans as evil, and would have us living in the dark, cold and wet, eating nothing but cellulose for the sake of a green earth.
...Utter crap. Wake up. The mid atlantic elite have hijacked your state to give themselves a Potempkin village free of the vile fly over class, with their talk of property rights and freedom.
...Don't Jersey Vermont.
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