NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5730

Text File | 1992-08-12 | 9.7 KB | 176 lines

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Subject: RAPE OF THE NATIONAL FORESTS (Part II)
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    "Simply put, your tax dollars and mine are being used to subsidize
    environmental damage on the national forests." A series of laws,
    beginning with the tax legislation of 1943, "turned the forest
    service into an adjunct of the timber industry."
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  In exact reversal of the government's treatment of poor people,
  where things are made deliberately unpleasant for them to receive
  "entitlements," the federal government has gone to extremes to make
  it easy for timber interests to decimate the national forests.  It
  has built a road system, at taxpayer expense, that is eight times
  the length of the interstate highway system,

   The subsidy component is obscured by Forest Service accounting,
   which writes off road construction expenses over as many as 2000
   years, a technique that allowed the agency to hide $250 million in
   expenses in 1990.
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    "John Crowell, former vice president and general counsel of
    Louisiana Pacific, the largest timber company user of the public
    forests, was put in charge of the Forest Service.  Although the
    press occasionally mentioned that this was putting foxes in charge
    of the chickens, these appointments were not contested seriously ..
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[On the Timber Industry - Logger - Forest Service (TILFS) Complex:]

(...article continued...)

          ==================================
          TILFS Goes After The Public Domain
          ==================================

THE PRIVATELY OWNED forests--vast acreages held from giveaways and
blatant corruption in the 19th century--were widely subjected to a
"cut-and-run" policy that eventually helped turn the timber companies
to the public domain.  According to resource economist Richard Rice,
"As private timber inventories declined and the demand for federal
timber rose in the early 1950s, Congress readily appropriated funds
for the Forest Service to hire a large work force of foresters and
engineers to prepare timber sales and design the necessary road
system."  Jack Shepherd pointed out earlier in his book _The Forest
Killers_ that in the years 1963-1970, "Congress forked over 95 percent
of the funds the Forest Service requested for _selling_ trees (to the
timber industry), while providing just 40 percent of what the Service
needed for _growing_ them back."  Like the military-industrial complex
(MIC), the TILFS complex mastered the art of mobilizing power to gain
privileged access to the national forests and to get the relevant
government agencies to run interference for it.  Like the Red Scares,
so useful to the MIC, the TILFS complex played the game of "housing
crisis" and timber shortage, and, of course, the threat to jobs.
Money to local congresspeople helped create a powerful congressional
lobby, logrolling in the interest of looting the national forest.

A series of laws, beginning with the tax legislation of 1943, "turned
the forest service into an adjunct of the timber industry."  The
budget of the Forest Service as a whole, its secondary activities, and
monies given to local communities, were gradually tied to and made
dependent on the volume of timber cut.  Just as the MIC spreads
contracts for a B-1 bomber or Star Wars widely, so the TILFS dispersed
timber sales over many jurisdictions, which "increased local and
congressional support for additional logging."  This gave all parties
a vested interest in rapid cutting.  Effective mobilization of power
in the timber industry interest was also brought about by TILFS
attention to appointments to the Forest Service (and Bureau of Land
Management), making sure that these bodies were dominated by friends
of the ripoff, ardent believers in _using_ the national forests,
mainly for timber.  (One commentator, philosopher Thomas Birch, noted
in 1971 that "The mentality that governs Forest Service management
decisions is characterized by a near and complete failure in morality,
a failure predicated on the fallacious conviction that everything that
is there is for our use, and, therefore, must be utilized for our
purposes and cannot simply be left alone.")


       =======================================================
       The Neo-Reactionaries And Greater Efficiency--In Looting
       =======================================================


WITH THE ACCESSION to power of the neo-reactionaries, Nixon and then
Reagan, the timber companies and the "immediate gratification" right
took complete charge.  Ralph Hodges, executive vice president of the
National Forest Products Association, the number one timber industry
lobby, became the principal consultant of the Nixon team on national
forest policy, and the assault on the forests escalated.  In the
Reagan years, in addition to appointing ultra-reactionary James Watt
as head of the Department of Interior, Donald Hodel, a former counsel
for Georgia Pacific, became his deputy, and John Crowell, former vice
president and general counsel of Louisiana Pacific, the largest timber
company user of the public forests, was put in charge of the Forest
Service.  Although the press occasionally mentioned that this was
putting foxes in charge of the chickens, these appointments were not
contested seriously and, more important, did not lead to an in-depth
examination of and follow-up on the policy effects of these
appointments.  This permitted the foxes to eat the chickens at their
leisure, without audible opposition.

In exact reversal of the government's treatment of poor people, where
things are made deliberately unpleasant for them to receive
"entitlements," the federal government has gone to extremes to make it
easy for timber interests to decimate the national forests.  It has
built a road system, at taxpayer expense, that is eight times the
length of the interstate highway system, and it sets aside additional
monies from the proceeds of public sales of timber to finance road
construction by the timber companies in the national forests.  It
writes contracts with the timber companies for as long as 50 years
ahead for the sale of enormous tracts of still virgin and unroaded
forests at generous prices, and then, if timber prices fall, does not
enforce the contracts-- exactly paralleling the "golden handshake" of
MIC contracts.  The subsidy component is obscured by Forest Service
accounting, which writes off road construction expenses over as many
as 2000 years, a technique that allowed the agency to hide $250
million in expenses in 1990.

The Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund estimated the subsidy to the timber
industry in 1985 at $650 million.  Even on the accounting basis used
by the Forest Service, net losses are suffered in 98 of 120 national
forests exploited for timber, with the 98 losers costing $256.8
million in 1990.  Robert Wolf, a former Congressional Research Service
and congressional expert on timber sales, estimates that the tax loss
on timber sales, 1980-1990 inclusive, was $3.2 billion, not counting
either interest costs, the costs of environmental damage, or the
foregone recreational and other benefits of intact forests.  The
Wilderness Society has estimated prospective losses in the 1990s from
below-cost commercial sales of national forest timber as perhaps $2
billion.  As Richard Rice expresses it, "Simply put, your tax dollars
and mine are being used to subsidize environmental damage on the
national forests."

It is interesting to note that while conservatives berate government
for poor efficiency and call for privatization to remedy this defect,
when they come into power government efficiency declines markedly,
giveaways of public property and subsidies increase, and the public
service becomes more than ever an arm of private industry.  This
suggests that the alleged interest in "efficiency" may be fraudulent
in the first place, an intellectual cover for simple greed and
subordination to private interests and for the ongoing violations of
fiduciary and legal obligations to the general public.  This is
consistent with the view that Reaganomics is a form of class warfare;
it is also consistent with Reagan-Bush policy on regulation and
privatization.

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