The Old Hook Tender’s Admonishment
By Bear Bait
DeFazio has seniority, and a reputation as a loose cannon, albeit a smurf loose cannon, and has to run for office every two years. He flies all over the deck in rolling seas, but doesn’t do any good or damage. Just saves himself and his job, while waxing smart about stuff he does not seem to be able to change or alter or move forward.
Democrats are a thin majority. They have been bedded with the radical and moderate wings of Eco-Advocacy, and their minders, the BINGOs, since Frampton was pooping yellow. The Dems, including Perilous Peter, will not vote to cut a tree in public forests because they cannot afford to lose votes in an election year. Under their Big Tent are more Greenies than there ever were folks employing people. Those advocating cutting trees do not have power base enough to sway a Democrat away from the no-cut status quo.
Public lands are the wilderness, and so should be protected and kept in the public grasp forever… unless you are in Nevada. Specifically Clark County, Nevada. Home to Las Vegas and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Thousands of acres of public land, wilderness study area, desert tortoise habitat, have been auctioned and sold to municipalities and private developers, all the money from the sales of the public lands staying in Nevada by Congressional law and special consent. $3 billion dollars worth of money staying in Nevada to be a honey pot for building public good. It is the all time greatest state slush fund ever. All from the sale of lands people in Montana or Vermont or Illinois thought they owned. Ha! Harry sold them for you, and his constituents kept the money. Funny how that works.
You have to understand Las Vegas, and Nevada, home to legalized gambling and brothels for all my lifetime. Meyer Lansky, the head of the Jewish mob, sent Bugsy Seigel to Las Vegas to begin the replacement of the Mob’s Havana and Miami gambling business, because Lansky knew Cuba was not stable and J.Edgar needed a new dress. So the Mob used the Eccles Salt Lake City banking empire as a depository of their money (tch tch… some have said “launder” in their reports), and that wonderful relationship between Reid’s Mormon faith and his constituency working with able gaming managers from the Mob, built Las Vegas. Good, law abiding, hard working Mormons running and working for the casinos, not drinking or gambling in their spare time, and the money poured in from out of town and stayed by design. But they ran out of land, and were surrounded by the unclaimed public domain managed by Interior’s BLM.
Reid has been the architect, vigorish hustler, and driving force to have those lands sold “for the public good” to Las Vegas public and private interests. The environmental values were mitigated by declaring great expanses of Nevada USFS and BLM land “wilderness,” with all the unclaimed ground water under them owned by Clark County. In fact, the whole state except 6 counties in the NE corner around Elko are not covered. Possibly because those are the counties where the big gold mines are. Nevada has a royalty tax on gold and other precious metals that stays in the county of origin.
If you look at an up-to-date map of Nevada, showing public land and private land, and compare it with one of 20 years ago, you will see the big new white donut of private land surrounding Las Vegas. It is noticeable in a state where over 80% of the land is federally owned. Or was. Harry is still alive, still Senate Majority Leader, and evidently still able to what Peter DeFazio never will be able to do: get something done to help his state. I read now that some of that slush fund is headed to Tahoe to buy private lands to buffer special places and bring them back into Federal ownership. Harry is spreading it around Nevada, and harvesting the good will.
Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, all have public land thwarting development. It will never get sold to private interests. For some reason the Mob is not in control here, yet, and our Mormon senators are not senior enough to get the job done, although Oregon should have a leg up on the others.
The Eco-Advocates negotiated deals in Nevada to save face. You have to wonder if they were just saving some legs from getting broken. Plus the values here are nowhere near Las Vegas values. There the chosen few can build billion dollar casinos. Here you have a hard time siting a Home Depot. And even Petulant Peter cannot help you. But $3 billion dollars can, together with an open door to more whenever the powers that be decide it is needed. Wow!! Reid has absolute power. Schools are getting land from the Feds in Nevada for special rates that make miners blush. If it has corrupted him, only the record will show. And it will. His children are in the same class of entitlement as Ted Steven’s are in Alaska, and that is undoing Ted as I write.
So, my take on the reality of thinning in Federal forests is that it is not going to happen as long as Democrats run things, or try to woo the votes so that they might run things. Peter Piss Up a Rope, the Rhode Island white hope, can suggest or promise anything, but he is trying to deliver papers without shoes, a bike, a paper bag, or a job from the publisher.
A great thermal breath… some words on paper… the old hook tender’s admonishment about wishing into one hand and pooping in the other… “Which one fills up first, kid? It ain’t gonna quit raining until it does. Try to make a bonus on that hemlock and the butt cut… and hide behind that tall stump when we go ahead on ‘er.” — bear bait
