Senator Jon Tester has been awarded the lowest grade, four Pinocchios, by the Washington Post fact checker for Tester’s big lies saying “every logging sale” in the state was “under litigation.” Truth is only 14% are under litigation and only 4% are stalled due to litigation.
Local and state politicians, timber industry officials as well as “conservation” groups join in as junior Pinocchio puppets when they spread permutations of the Big Lie and castigate so-called “extremist” grassroots forest watch groups for supposedly stopping timber supply. The media, with a few exceptions, spread the lies instead of reporting facts.
The same Big Lie takes many shapes. For example, recent articles about the plight of Montana counties due to lack of SRS funds indicate the problem of missing funds is from lack of logging. Not only is SRS no longer tied to logging levels, but Forest Service Region-1 met its timber cut goals last year. Congress did not appropriate SRS funds.
Why do they lie? Obviously, if they had facts to back up their rhetoric they wouldn’t have to lie. What purpose is served? The supposed fix for their mythical environmental “obstructionists” is to gut environmental laws, throw out science, close the court house door to all but the wealthy, and deny citizens the ability to be meaningfully involved in public land management.
Apparently our public forest legacy is just a big hunk of pork to be divvied up by lying politicians for private profit and campaign contributions, while American citizens are sidelined and cowed into silence because certain parties have ratcheted up the cost of speaking out, so most everybody lays low and silently watches.
Now is the time for people to care about forests and democracy. Given what’s at stake, we deserve a true and factual debate.
Votes trump money.
Larry Campbell
Darby