Himself admits 'shovel-ready' never happened, and blathers about creating some sort of gubbermint bank for infrastructure projects (no moral hazard there, huh?), and the unemployment rate continues to climb, food stamp dependency rises monthly (36% of Alabama now on food stamps...), and somehow in Obamaland, it's all because dose wascawy Wepubwikans won't let him spend enough money.
This is just one example of what happens anytime anyone anywhere in our fair country wants to build a road, or dam, or drill an oil well, or open a quarry, or...
INDIANAPOLIS — Environmentalists have filed a lawsuit aimed at stopping construction of the Interstate 69 extension in Southern Indiana, claiming the project violates federal environmental laws.
Landowners affected by the I-69 project, Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads and the I-69 Accountability Project filed the suit in federal court in Indianapolis on Monday, a week after federal highway officials signed off on the final environmental review for the stretch from the Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center to Bloomington.
The groups contend that the highway project threatens the endangered Indiana bat and violates the federal Endangered Species Act.
A spokesman for Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads said the group believes the state highway department underestimated in its count of nearly 1,500 geologic features such as sinkholes, caves and springs in the path of the latest approved section.
“I-69 should never have been routed through this extremely environmentally sensitive area,” Thomas Tokarski said.
It isn't like the State of Indiana didn't do its homework before they turned the first spade of dirt. It takes millions of dollars and years of time just to get over the regulatory hurdles, after the design work, putting the money together, etc. That's before anybody moves one shovel full of dirt.
Even with all that done, there's always an 'environmental' group to file suit on behalf of some endangered rodent, or eyeless fish that lives in a cave. 'Cuz every square foot of land is 'extremely environmentally sensitive'.
It's the classic shakedown, Chicago-style, always staged by enthusiastic Obama supporters. Pay us off, or we shut you down.
Locally, here in Tennessee, State Route 840 was stopped dead in its tracks by 'Native American' groups after the environmental scam stopped working. They claimed that aboriginal graves lay along the route, and would be disturbed. Turns out they couldn't show any line of relation between those graves, dating from centuries ago by aborigines who left nothing except bones and arrowheads behind, and any current 'Native Americans'. But there was a deal struck anyway, and a settlement, etc.
This is the verbiage that opens the TN-840 website:
In 1986, State Route 840 was initiated as part of the state’s Better Roads Program to provide economic growth by improving access to communities in Middle Tennessee. On the 78-mile route, 66 miles are open to traffic, with approximately 12 miles remaining in some phase of construction in Williamson County. The entire route is scheduled to be open to traffic by December 2012.
That's not a typo, ya'll! They've been trying to build this road since 1986! The congestion builds in Nashville, and opportunities are lost for real businesses, creating real employment, to set up shop in Middle Tennessee. It won't finish til December 2012, 'cuz they've just begun site prep on that final short stretch where all those 'Native American' graves are supposed to exist! Twenty-six years to build seventy-eight miles of road through the countryside.
There are dams that need building, wells that need drilling, quarries that need to operate, plants that need to open.
And we have a Federal government and its allies determined to crush all of the above, all the while yammering about 'Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs'.
Both these highways open up isolated regions of their states, and create opportunities for the starved small towns nearby to come back to life.
If Obama really wants to create jobs, instead of more millions dependent upon his largesse, he would be strong-arming every one of these bogus environmental groups, and tell them to sit down and shut up.
But he won't. 'Cuz he's more interested in shutting down the economy than in ever allowing it to prosper.
Showing posts with label Environmentalists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environmentalists. Show all posts
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Passive Verbs, Active Verbs: Words Have Meaning, Unless...
...you're doing a story for NPR, and need to cover for the environmental Luddites.
For decades after World War II, the small town of Oakridge in the southern Cascade mountains of Oregon was a booming lumber town. But by the early 1990s, the lumber industry had collapsed, and Oakridge has struggled ever since, losing families and businesses.
So far, so good. Change happens. Industries come and go. Nobody's making horse buggies in great numbers anymore, for instance. So, we can use a passive form of 'collapse'. Rather like the Spanish reflexive verbs: 'se rompio'--it broke itself.
Then, a couple of paragraphs later, we discover the cause of the collapse!
There were lots of economic factors at play, but the death knell for lumber came in 1990 when the federal government listed the spotted owl as a threatened species and declared much of its habitat in the national forests off-limits to loggers.
The federal government, at the behest of environmental groups like Sierra Club, collapsed the economy of the area. That's what happened! All those people, surrounded by the riches of a forest that could allow them to prosper forever, with sane management, marooned in the name of the Spotted Owl.
The rest of the story talks about a town full of empty storefronts, depopulation, welfare dependency, food banks, and 350 miles of bike trails for visitors to ride. Retirement residences for the well-heeled. And oh-so-chic restaurants for them to dine in. And people on unemployment benefits moving in, because they are too far out of the way for the gubbermint to insist they seek work. And a former logger, now commuting 40 miles each way to do shift work at an ice-cream factory. And...and...and...
The story repeats again and again. The journalists describe this sort of travesty as if it appeared out of nowhere, using the passive verb. The people affected, living in poverty in a sea of wealth, know this is not the case.
OS drives through once-thriving small towns in his beloved South, and the story repeats again and again. Kentucky towns collapsed, because the gubbermint declared war on their way of life--tobacco--and nothing ever showed up to replace it. Tennessee and Alabama towns now dependent on income derived from industrial poultry farming, with periodic raids on the processing plants to clear the Mexicans out. Two hydro dams in Tennessee were stopped dead in their tracks in the past two decades, because the environmentalists found their own local versions of the Spotted Owl. That power is now needed, and the towns that could have benefited (not the least from the flood control) are shells, and poverty is just the normal state of being. But, the hiking trails, fly-fishing, and scenery are lovely. If you have the leisure time and resources to do that sort of thing. The forests are overrun with deer, because not enough people are hunting to control the herd. Check the fishing regulations of some states--enough to keep anyone home.
At least ten years behind schedule, State Route 840 is being completed around Nashville, tying East-West to the South without the terrifying drive through Nashville's snarl. It was held up, because one group decided that they should have the right to claim thousand-year-old Indian burial mounds as sacred, and another group wanted to be certain no exits would ever be built near their tony country estates. The taxpayers had to pay them off, and finally, finally the road is being paved. Just in time for the Great Recession. And who is going to invest into industrial facilities in all that industrial park acreage developed and set aside?
Jobs aren't created, because the gubbermint and their enviro/socialist allies, despite proclamations to the contrary, thinks of the businessman (and woman) as the enemy. At every turn, in every transaction or initiative, the gubbermint has its hand out, via a tax or regulation. Rational investors move production (and operations) overseas. We buy iPhones and other gadgets made by slave labor overseas, and carry them with us while we ride our trail bikes through the virgin forest, near the town full of impoverished descendants of the people who settled the area and made it flourish. The solidly-built houses and buildings of the remaining neighborhoods and Main Streets stand in testimony of what they accomplished, and what is being destroyed.
And, the poverty and cultural malaise quietly grow.
The passive verb is not appropriate to our situation.
This country made some terrible cultural decisions in the 1960s and 1970s, and they have come home to roost upon us. Until we begin to make some healthier decisions, in the active voice, the decline will continue.
OS now rails and works in the hopes that his grandchildren will prosper. It may almost be too late for his children.
Passivity, in any sense of the word, is not an option.
For decades after World War II, the small town of Oakridge in the southern Cascade mountains of Oregon was a booming lumber town. But by the early 1990s, the lumber industry had collapsed, and Oakridge has struggled ever since, losing families and businesses.
So far, so good. Change happens. Industries come and go. Nobody's making horse buggies in great numbers anymore, for instance. So, we can use a passive form of 'collapse'. Rather like the Spanish reflexive verbs: 'se rompio'--it broke itself.
Then, a couple of paragraphs later, we discover the cause of the collapse!
There were lots of economic factors at play, but the death knell for lumber came in 1990 when the federal government listed the spotted owl as a threatened species and declared much of its habitat in the national forests off-limits to loggers.
The federal government, at the behest of environmental groups like Sierra Club, collapsed the economy of the area. That's what happened! All those people, surrounded by the riches of a forest that could allow them to prosper forever, with sane management, marooned in the name of the Spotted Owl.
The rest of the story talks about a town full of empty storefronts, depopulation, welfare dependency, food banks, and 350 miles of bike trails for visitors to ride. Retirement residences for the well-heeled. And oh-so-chic restaurants for them to dine in. And people on unemployment benefits moving in, because they are too far out of the way for the gubbermint to insist they seek work. And a former logger, now commuting 40 miles each way to do shift work at an ice-cream factory. And...and...and...
The story repeats again and again. The journalists describe this sort of travesty as if it appeared out of nowhere, using the passive verb. The people affected, living in poverty in a sea of wealth, know this is not the case.
OS drives through once-thriving small towns in his beloved South, and the story repeats again and again. Kentucky towns collapsed, because the gubbermint declared war on their way of life--tobacco--and nothing ever showed up to replace it. Tennessee and Alabama towns now dependent on income derived from industrial poultry farming, with periodic raids on the processing plants to clear the Mexicans out. Two hydro dams in Tennessee were stopped dead in their tracks in the past two decades, because the environmentalists found their own local versions of the Spotted Owl. That power is now needed, and the towns that could have benefited (not the least from the flood control) are shells, and poverty is just the normal state of being. But, the hiking trails, fly-fishing, and scenery are lovely. If you have the leisure time and resources to do that sort of thing. The forests are overrun with deer, because not enough people are hunting to control the herd. Check the fishing regulations of some states--enough to keep anyone home.
At least ten years behind schedule, State Route 840 is being completed around Nashville, tying East-West to the South without the terrifying drive through Nashville's snarl. It was held up, because one group decided that they should have the right to claim thousand-year-old Indian burial mounds as sacred, and another group wanted to be certain no exits would ever be built near their tony country estates. The taxpayers had to pay them off, and finally, finally the road is being paved. Just in time for the Great Recession. And who is going to invest into industrial facilities in all that industrial park acreage developed and set aside?
Jobs aren't created, because the gubbermint and their enviro/socialist allies, despite proclamations to the contrary, thinks of the businessman (and woman) as the enemy. At every turn, in every transaction or initiative, the gubbermint has its hand out, via a tax or regulation. Rational investors move production (and operations) overseas. We buy iPhones and other gadgets made by slave labor overseas, and carry them with us while we ride our trail bikes through the virgin forest, near the town full of impoverished descendants of the people who settled the area and made it flourish. The solidly-built houses and buildings of the remaining neighborhoods and Main Streets stand in testimony of what they accomplished, and what is being destroyed.
And, the poverty and cultural malaise quietly grow.
The passive verb is not appropriate to our situation.
This country made some terrible cultural decisions in the 1960s and 1970s, and they have come home to roost upon us. Until we begin to make some healthier decisions, in the active voice, the decline will continue.
OS now rails and works in the hopes that his grandchildren will prosper. It may almost be too late for his children.
Passivity, in any sense of the word, is not an option.
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