NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9291

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Subject: Re: Wise Use in Northeast (anti-Green)
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Date: 13 Dec 92 22:24:00 GMT
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/* Written  2:12 pm  Dec 13, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
The Scent of Opportunity:
A Survey of the Wise Use/Property Rights
Movement in New England

by William Kevin Burke

December 12, 1992

Background of the Wise Use Movement

 Though the national Wise Use movement includes
groups as diverse as the Farm Bureau and
organizations for off road motorcycle riders, the
movement has a consistent style and message.
These derive from the movement's founders: Ron
Arnold, Wise Use's intellectual author, and Alan
Gottlieb, a businessman who has made millions of
dollars doing direct mail fundraising for a
variety of right-wing causes. In blunt terms,
Arnold invented the Wise Use movement and
Gottlieb provided the mailing lists and
fundraising capability that let it prosper.

Some national Wise Use observers feel that
Alliance for America, a coalition of grass roots
anti-environmental and property rights groups
formed in the fall of 1991, represents a move by
Wise Use pioneer Grant Gerber away from Gottlieb
and Arnold. This may have to do with press
revelations that Gottlieb served seven months in
prison for tax evasion and Arnold was a
registered agent for the American Freedom
Coalition, an organization that receives almost a
third of its budget from the Reverend Sun Myung
Moon's Unification Church.

Arnold was once an organizer for the Sierra Club.
A profile in Outside magazine credited him with
organizing teaching expeditions that helped
create the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area in
western Washington state in 1976. Arnold's big
career break coincided with the coming of the
Reagan Presidency and Arnold's own rapid swing to
the right. In 1981 he coauthored At the Eye of
the Storm, a biography of James Watt that the
former Secretary of the Interior not only
authorized, but also helped edit. As Watt's
anti-environmental "Sage Brush Rebellion" petered
out and the public embraced the environmental
movement in the mid to late 1980s, Arnold formed
an association with Alan Gottlieb. Together they
forged dozens of widely scattered groups--groups
whose main bond was that they felt threatened by
environmental protection and the rise of the
environmental movement--into the Wise Use
anti-environmental movement.

Ron Arnold took the Wise Use movement's name from
the works of Gifford Pinchot, first head of the
U.S. Forest Service. He has said he chose the
phrase because it is catchy and uses only nine
spaces in a newspaper headline. Arnold was also
pleased with the ambiguity of the phrase.
"Symbols register most powerfully in the
subconscious when they are not perfectly clear,"
he told Outside. Arnold told the same reporter
that "facts don't matter," essentially admitting
that he is willing to lie or manipulate
information to achieve his goals, a tactic the
Wise Use movement employs regularly.

Gottlieb's Center for Defense of Free Enterprise
reportedly takes in about $5 million per year
through direct mail and telephone fundraising for
a variety of right-wing causes. Gottlieb seems to
possess a genius for dancing along the edge of
legal business practices. He purchased the
building that houses CDFE's headquarters with
money from two of his own non-profit foundations,
then transferred the building's title to his own
name so he could charge his foundations over
eight thousand dollars per month rent. Then there
was his conviction for tax fraud. But even jail
did not hurt his business. In Gottlieb's own
ultraconservative circles, tax evasion seems to
be a badge of honor.

At present the Wise Use movement is a very loose
coalition. It includes mining companies anxious
to preserve a 120-year-old statute that allows
mining companies to purchase federal lands for
$2.50 to $5.00 per acre; manufacturers of Off
Road Vehicles (ORV's) eager to promote the use of
their products on public lands; ranchers fearful
of losing their federally subsidized grazing
permits; and developers, small businessmen, and
landowners frightened by John Birch Society
claims that the federal government is out to grab
their land. This last group dominates the New
England property rights movement.

The John Birch Society envisions a world run by
secret elites whom Birchers call the "Insiders."
According to Birch lore, government regulations
are part of a larger Insider scheme to create a
socialist "One World Government" that will deny
individual and property rights and lead to a
global collectivized society. Many Birch
activists are also part of the right wing of
religious fundamentalism, and pursue their
anti-modernist theological and political goals
with equal zeal.

In 1988 the first large gathering of Wise Use
advocates in Reno, Nevada, led to the
publication, by Alan Gottlieb, of Ron Arnold's
book, The Wise Use Agenda, which outlines their
movement's goals and aims. Few environmentalists
would find fault with the spirit behind this
quote from The Wise Use Agenda: "[Wise Uses's
founders] felt that industrial development can be
directed in ways that enhance the Earth, not
destroy it." But the agenda itself is basically a
wish list for the extractive industries. The Wise
Use movement seeks the opening of all federal
wilderness lands to logging, mining, and the
driving of ORV's. Despite much rhetoric about
seeking ecological balance and "environmental
solutions," almost the only environmental problem
the Agenda addresses, rather than dismisses, is
the threat of global warming from the buildup of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The solution
proposed is the immediate clear cutting of the
small portion of old growth left in the United
States so those lands may be replanted with young
trees that will absorb more carbon dioxide.

The combination of deception, hysteria, and
demagoguery that has brought wealth and fame to
Arnold and Gottlieb has found fertile soil in New
England. Backed by groups ranging from the John
Birch Society to the Farm Bureau, the Wise Use
movement has won a few significant political
victories. Sadly, these victories have often
resulted not from open honest discussion of
controversial issues but from misinformation and
scare tactics. Wherever it appears, the Wise Use
movement depends on promoting people's fears for
their land and future. It exploits the fact that
most people just do not know much about the
complex intricacies of federal and local
environmental programs, government regulations,
and land use planning in general.