Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Tony Owen, organic farmer, Cali...

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Tony Owen, organic farmer, Cali...:  

Mid Week At Work. Tony Owen, organic farmer, California, 1972.

Lex Anteinternet: Reactionary

Lex Anteinternet: Reactionary:  

Reactionary

 "Mind numbingly stupid" is the way one person I know characterized it.

Governor Questions Transparency of BLM Land Acquisition

CHEYENNE, Wyo. –  Governor Mark Gordon has announced that Wyoming is appealing a massive acquisition of land by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Natrona and Carbon Counties. The State has concerns that BLM did not involve the public in the acquisition process and that the environmental assessment did not adequately consider impacts on tax revenues, school funding, grazing, mineral development and other natural resources.

The Governor emphasized that the challenge to the acquisition is focused on the adequacy and proper adherence to the process that occurred. He supports the expansion of public access for hunters and anglers, as well as opportunities for recreation. He also recognizes the rights of private landowners to sell their land as they see fit. 

“This action is not about limiting access for sportspeople or challenging the rights of private property owners rights,” Governor Gordon said. “It is about whether the Federal government can increase its land holdings without public scrutiny, or should it adhere to the same transparent process that private landowners are subject to if they sought to purchase or exchange federal land.”

To buy or sell land the State must have a 60-day comment period and hold two public votes of the State Board of Land Commissioners.

Here's the actual complaint.^[1]

At some point conservationist, hunters, fishermen, outdoorsmen, sportsmen, and the tourist industry really should start to start questioning why they support Republican candidates in this state.^[2]  Suffice it to say, if Marty Throne, the Democrat, was now Governor, we wouldn't be putting up with this now.

Indeed, even while it's clear that the overwhelming majority of Wyomingites are very much in favor of preserving public lands, it continues to be the case that the Republican Party in the state has an element that doesn't.  Indeed, it's hard not to recall the late 1980s when Republicans from southeastern Wyoming attempted to privatize wildlife in the state, and came close to success before public outcry stopped it.  It's also worth nothing that a Hageman was part of that effort, and the current challenger to Liz Cheney is part of that family.

And more recently, the legislature came really close to passing a bill to "study" trying to take the Federal land away from the Federal government.  The far right in the GOP still supports that against the will of the residents of the state.

So let's break this down a little more on what the Governor said.

• The Governor emphasized that the challenge to the acquisition is focused on the adequacy and proper adherence to the process that occurred. He supports the expansion of public access for hunters and anglers, as well as opportunities for recreation. He also recognizes the rights of private landowners to sell their land as they see fit. 

Well, then, if all that's true, knock it off and don't be suing about it.

• “This action is not about limiting access for sportspeople or challenging the rights of private property owners rights,

Well that's exactly what the action does.

• “It is about whether the Federal government can increase its land holdings without public scrutiny, or should it adhere to the same transparent process that private landowners are subject to if they sought to purchase or exchange federal land.”

M'eh.  A land exchange isn't anything like a sale, and quite frankly it seems that in most land exchanges the Federal government ends up with less land than it started off with.

The state should dismiss this action.

There's no reason to believe that this land won't still be grazed.  It probably just opens it up for that, on a very large scale, for neighboring ranchers.  What it does beyond that is open up land that's been closed to ready access for years up to the residents of the state.

Footnotes:

1.  A "complaint" is the initiating document in a lawsuit.

2.  I know the answer to this question even as I pose it.  As the national Democratic Party is for gun control in a big way, for abortion on demand, for much more government involvement in everything, and is on the far left of every social movement, it leaves conservative voters with nowhere else to go.

This is a tragedy, quite frankly, as it leads to the delusion in the GOP that Eathornism is the view of everyone in the GOP, and the State.  And because a lot of people in any political party are followers, rather than thinkers, it means that people who support extreme positions in the GOP do so as they're just following along not thinking them out, which would lead them to some other conclusion on some issues.

I've long maintained here, for example, that there's no reason to believe that there aren't a considerable number of people who, for example, are opposed to abortion and the death penalty, but I'm certain if this came up to the GOP Central Committee right now we'd get full support for the death penalty in a major way. That's a minor example, however.

I'm also certain that there are those, for example, who are opposed to abortion, support the war in Ukraine, and are very concerned about climate change. Where do they go to vote? They can't vote Democratic, due to abortion, and the GOP here doesn't really reflect their views on anything else.

As a result of that, they vote Republican, as abortion is their big issue.  Some people do the same with the Second Amendment, and otherwise hold very Democratic views.  

And the Public Lands issue is a good example.  People who vote only on this issue, and there are some, vote Democratic quite a bit, I suspect.

The problem is, however, is that on life and death issues, like abortion, that leaves those very serious on those issues with hardly any options left.

This year might prove to be different, however, as the Republican Party is setting up horrific moral choices for the voters.  In numerous states, the GOP is running Secretary of State candidates who would have stolen the vote for Trump in 2020, had they been in power.  As people go to the polls this upcoming election, it looks like in many races they'll have a Republican candidate who effectively is pushing for the end of democracy, or at least the installation of an illiberal democracy.  As democracy is the first principal of democracy, many voters may now pause when they go to vote Republican and wonder if that principle requires them to vote for somebody else.

For those with less firm concerns, the switch to another party may even be easier.  This fall, for example, you know for certain that voters who normally vote Republican will go into the voting booth, having never said a word to anyone, and vote for a Democratic candidate as they're sick of Trump, worried about Eathorne, tired of Republican land grabbing efforts, not really convinced that everyone needs to have StG42, and worried about what kind of environment the future holds in a year that's been weird.  The GOP ought to consider that, as if they don't manage to install the illiberal democracy they seem to imagine, they may end up getting very much the opposite.

Lex Anteinternet: Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

Lex Anteinternet: Yellowstone. A really radical idea.: 

Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.

There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer.  Here's a National Park Service item on it:

Updates

• Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
• Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
• The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
• To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
• All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
• There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
• The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
• Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
• At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding. 
• Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
• The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
• Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.

Here's an idea.

Don't rebuild the roads.

For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become.  A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that.  For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.

Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.

Well, nothing now, so to speak.

Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park.  It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now.   Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn.  There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.

Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority.  Things are much different today than they were then.

Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar.  To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area.  To others, it's a sort of theme park. 

The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood.  The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do.  Early camping parties travelled there.  People fished there, and still do.  Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else.  This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.  

Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite.  Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie.  All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.

But they don't all have the same value.

Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness.  Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it.  And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.

A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.

Don't rebuilt the roads.

That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly.  And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general.  And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.

But that's exactly what should be done.

Blog Mirror: The Ants and the Grasshopper

 

The Ants and the Grasshopper

Lex Anteinternet: Casualties of War. The Attu Islanders and their i...

Lex Anteinternet: Casualties of War. The Attu Islanders and their i...: 

Casualties of War. The Attu Islanders and their island.

Attu woman and child, 1941.  She'd never see another summer on her home island again. By Malcolm Greany - https://www.flickr.com/photos/12567713@N00/2667001144/sizes/o/in/photostream/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17118121

On June 7, 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army landed on Attu Island, ferried there, of course, by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Attu is part of the Aluetians.  It's 344 square miles in size.  For comparison's sake, that's a little bigger than Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands, and a little smaller than Kauai.  

It's relatively large, in real terms, 35 miles by 20.

It has an Aleutian climate, with average temperatures below 60F in the summer and in the mid 20s in the depth of winter.  It's coldest temperature ever was -17F, in 1902, and the hottest temperature ever, 77F in 1925.

The island has been inhabited since antiquity, and it's estimated that prior to contact with Europeans, the island had a native population between 2,000 and 5,000 souls.  Archeologists believe that settlement came from the east, not the west, even though it's the closest of the Aleutians to Asia and very distant, today, from the nearest Alaskan settlement of any kind.

It's one of the "Near Islands", as its near Asia.

Attu, along with the other Near Islands, seems to have first had settlements about 3,000 years ago, surprisingly late if it's considered that the arriving populations had spread throughout North America far before that.

The first contact with  Europeans came from Russian fur hunters in 1745, when they actually went to Attu after being confronted by a large body of armed natives on the first island they attempted to land at.  The first Russian contact on Attu violent, withe Russians taking an old woman and a boy hostage, oddly keeping the boy as an interpreter, although it has to be presumed he spoke no Russian.

A few weeks after that, the Russians raided an Attu village and killed fifteen men, with the purpose of the raid to take Attu women as sex slaves.  The location has ever since born the name Massacre Bay.

In 1750, the Russians introduced Arctic Fox to the island.

The Russian presence caused the decline of the local fauna rapidly, a devastating event for the natives, and the Russians also introduced disease, playing out a story that is often associated with the European conquest of North America. By 1762 the population was estimated at about 100 natives, which would mean that the population decline had been unbelievably massive in just a twenty or so year span.

The decline in fortunes for the Russians on the island meant that it thereafter largely skipped the Russian colonization of the Aleutians, to the extent it could be called that, and it remained free of Russian economic control.  The Russians reappeared in the early 19th Century, and the Attu population remained very small.

Christianity was introduced at least as early as 1758, but a chapel was not built until 1825, with a Russian Orthodox Priest being assigned to it, along with other island churches in 1828.  He made his first visit to the island in 1831.  By 1860 the native population had rebounded to 227 plus an additional 21 individuals who were "Creole", i.e., of mixed heritage.  When Alaska was sold to the US in 1867, services to the island dropped off massively, and by 1880 the population had declined by half.  Nonetheless, visitors to the island in the early 20th Century, who were few, were impressed by how happy the residents were and how clean the two villages were.  In the 1920s the sod structures were replaced by the natives with wooden ones, with imported wood, which included building a wooden Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s and a school, without a teacher, in the 1932.  The teacher first appeared in 1940.

In the 19th and 20th Centuries, and indeed before, the men worked as trappers part of the year and moved to the hinterlands to do that.  Again, in the 20th Century, visitors were uniformly impressed by how happy the people living on the island were. And why not? Free of the chaos of the outside world, living a natural life, and with a Christian world view, they were as close to living in a paradise on earth as any people could be.

And then the Japanese came on June 7, 1942.

The Japanese removed all of the Attuans and kept them on Hokkaido.  By the war's end, half of them had died.  The US retook the island itself in May 1943.

The survivors wished to return to their homes when the war ended, but the US government did not allow them, garrisoning the island instead for a long range navigation site.  Truly, the government really did not have an existential right to deprive the Attuans of their home, but it did so.

The U.S. Coast Guard left in 2010.

In 2018 the descendants of the dispossessed Attuans were allowed to visit Attu.

Lex Anteinternet: BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new st...

Lex Anteinternet: BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new st...:  

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

 This major public access story hit the news here Thursday.

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

I'm quite familiar with this stretch of property. As a kid, before the recent owners who owned transferred it, I used to hunt part of it.  I never asked for permission, even though I'm sure I should have.  In those days, in the 70s, we asked for permission a lot less, and it was granted by fiat a lot more.

This is a real boon to sportsmen.  It'll open up miles of river to fishing, and miles and miles to hunting.  I've passed by deer and doves in this area a lot as I didn't have permission to go where they were.  Now I'll be able to, although I hope the BLM makes as much of this roadless as possible.

I hope they also lease it out for grazing.

Indeed, I have some mixed feelings about this as I really hate to see a local ranch go out of production.  The family that owned it had started off as sheepmen in Johnson County and moved down to Natrona County when their land was bought for coal production.  Now they'll just be out of agriculture entirely, and I really hate to see that, even though I'm glad to see this didn't go to out of state interest.  Indeed, what occurred is more in keeping with the purpose of the original Federal land programs, including the Homestead Act, than what often does occur with land sales now days.

I will note that, of course, in the age of the internet this of course resulted in moronic comments, including the blisteringly ignorant comment that its somehow unconstitutional for the Federal Government to own land. That comment is so dense that it should disqualify a person from going onto land in general until some education occurs.

Lex Anteinternet: The Mental Health Crisis. Okay. . . but why?

Lex Anteinternet: The Mental Health Crisis. Okay. . . but why?: 

The Mental Health Crisis. Okay. . . but why?

In the current debate, discussion, etc., or whatever it is on violence in the United States, we continually hear that the country has a "mental health crisis".

Vagrant sleeping on the street in Denver, a common sight.

Nobody seems to doubt this, and indeed it seems true.

We hear a lot of other common things stated by Americans about the United States, including that it's the "greatest nation on Earth". But does a great nation have a massive mental health crisis.

What's going on?

Well, it should be apparent that the crisis is an existential one.  If we have a massive crisis, it's because there's something massively wrong in the culture itself.  Other nations have lots of firearms in circulation without having what we're experiencing, and that alone tells us something.

And we also know that, contrary to what we often hear, our society is getting less and less violent, but at the same time our mental health is getting worse.  But mental health getting worse isn't a good thing by any measure.

And here's another fact of this crisis. From at least an external view, nobody whatsoever is going to do anything about this, really.

And here's why.

What is going on is that we've erased a set of standards that governed our society that were nearly wholly based on a Christian world view, on everything.  In their place we've erected nothing at all, other than a concept that whatever pleases you, you should do, even though every indicator is that this in fact doesn't make for a happy society at all.  Most recently we've even tried to erase biological lines written into our DNA, and simultaneously flooded our society with new intoxicants of all types, as the old ones apparently were sufficient.  Lines that at one time, if they were crossed, resulted in some sort of institutional intervention, no longer do.  Those in society crying for help aren't going to get it, as our new libertine society simply holds that their crying is simply an expression of their soul, rather than a desperate cry for help.

To add to it, we've wiped out meaningful and productive labor for an entire class of individual, which was often all that kept them tethered to something.  For many more, we've erased the change that tehir employment and daily endeavors are their own, rather than some board of directors living far away who care little about them. And the dream of working on the land, the most elemental dream of all, is just about dead in the United States.

And, added to that, the erasing of the natural bonds of family in an aggressive way means that entire generations of children are essentially raised in conditions that no human being has been since some prior variant of our genus started to become really intelligent.

Mental health crisis?

Yes, indeed.

Are we going to do something about it?

Probably not more than doping up as many people as we can and sending many more to bogus therapy.