Stinky Zinke, infamous for cronyism, luxury charter flights at your expense, and spending $139,000 on an unneeded set of oak doors for his office is at it again. Now, he is giving leases allowing fossil fuel companies to rape hundreds of up to 2.9 million acres of our land.
The Department of Interior is quietly preparing to offer hundreds of thousands of acres of public land for leasing to energy companies, a move critics have charged is being undertaken with minimal public input and little consideration for ecological and cultural preservation.
According to data compiled by environmental groups, the Bureau of Land Management will put 2.9 million acres up for potential leasing in the next four months. Because the land in question — in states including New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona — lacks designation as a national park or monument, it can be used for commercial purposes such as mining for minerals and drilling for oil and gas. Supporters say that bolstering the extractive industries will ensure energy independence for the United States, though shifting energy preferences and falling oil prices appear to undermine that assertion.
Some 250 million acres of land are under the bureau’s control nationwide, with the overwhelming majority of the parcels concentrated in a dozen Western states, which sometimes chafe at what they regard as Washington’s inept oversight. That tension was most dramatically on display in 2014, when federal agents engaged in an armed standoff with the family of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher with extreme right-wing views. The dispute arose from Bundy’s insistence on allowing his cattle to graze on public lands, a practice that saw him accrue some $1 million in fines, which he refused to pay.
The Bureau of Land Management is part of the Department of the Interior, which is today headed by Ryan Zinke, a Montana native who has styled himself a rugged conservationist, even as he maintains close ties to private enterprise. Many of his closest advisers at Interior have ties to the oil and gas industry, either as lobbyists or executives. His top deputy, for example, is David L. Bernhardt, a veteran Republican operative who has also lobbied on behalf of California agribusiness…
Inserted from <Huffington Post>
When the fossil fuel companies are done with the land, it will be unfit for any other use. Such environmental destruction is especially inappropriate at a time when climate change demands we shift to green energy.
RESIST!!
VOTE BLUE!!
55 DAYS!!
8 Responses to “Land Theft!”
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If anyone has been wondering why it’s such a big deal that they are also taking land away from already designated Parks and Monuments (Bears Ears comes readily to mind, possibly because it is sacred ground for native tribes, but it’s far from the only one – Grand Escalante and others are also being included), wonder no more.
It outrages me that there has been and is so little outcry about this! It’s not like we didn’t see it coming! I’ve been signing my little keyboard off, but one voice only counts for so much. Do people not realize that stealing OUR LAND from us is exactly the same as digging into our wallets?
This is exactly why WE THE PEOPLE need to rise up, resist, persist, insist, repeat as often as necessary. Make sure you are registered to vote, make sure your progressive kith and kin 18 and older are on the rolls, help at a registration drive, offer to give people a lift to the polls, and above all, cast an informed vote! Back progressives as much as you can, but right now even a DINO is better than any Rethuglican. Only a serious Blue Wave – hell, a Blue Tsunami – will give us any chance of reversing this country’s plummet into fascism. Above all, remember that losers don’t make policy.
Let us hope that we have not passed the point of no return.
They have no sense of dignity in pillaging these lands, nor any sense of decency about them. I’ve called, and signed petitions re: this, and it saddens me that this is happening. No respect for the Tribes that live on these lands, nor the wildlife, the flowers that bloom, and the environment either. What greedy basturds.
Trump will rape anything: women, the workers he hires but doesn’t pay, our Constitution, our land …
*sigh*
Ahhh so that’s who Stinky Zinky is (BARF), i finally see the ugly face of the recipient of all the petitions i’ve signed!!!
THEY MUST BE STOPPED!
Two nasty, amoral, greedy, bags of scum in human form!
Native Americans must have gotten really, really wry smiles on their faces after reading this article. Not only because all Americans are the victim of this Administration’s greed this time, but because Native Americans are screwed again when their sacred grounds are going up for lease too. The Administration must have thought Native Americans would take it in their stride, having been fracked by administration after administration in the past. It looks like they don’t and I hope enough Americans wake up, join Native Americans, keep this devilish plan from executing and retain the public land and sacred grounds as they are.
Amen to all!