[Vision2020] Money is running the show

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (April 19, 2014) Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

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His View: Study: Money is running the show
By Chuck Pezeshki
Well, the science is in. In a major study released by Princeton and Northwestern universities, after comparing actual policy decisions by the U.S. government to actual citizen preference, social scientists at these two prestigious universities have declared that the United States is an oligarchy.
What is an oligarchy? It's where the economic elite run the show.
Note that the policy period analyzed went from 1981-2002. I shudder to think what we'd be called if they'd looked at the period post-9/11 to present.
In the words of the report, "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
That's not particularly a big surprise. And with the added influence of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, along with the recent McCutcheon v. FEC decision that strikes, essentially, all limits on campaign donations, we should expect the situation to get worse.
Think that you don't see the effects of the power of the oligarchy versus the power of the people locally, just because you live in a small town? Consider the controversial Upper Lochsa Land Exchange. Tim Blixseth, oligarch, organizer of oligarchs, and professional mountebank, formerly of the Yellowstone Club, and so many other horrendous land deals, managed to gain control of what's called the "checkerboard" lands on either side of Lolo Pass. The checkerboard itself is called such because of the square mile alternating side-by-side pattern of ownership that is itself a legacy of former oligarchs - people like Frederick Weyerhaeuser, and J.J. Hill, the timber and railroad barons from the last half of the 19th century.
Since another wave of oligarchs - the owners and managers of Plum Creek Timber Company - managed to get to the timber first, most of the checkerboard, which used to be solid old-growth forest, got mowed to the ground in the late '70s and early '80s. You can check out Google Earth, and see the actual squares.
After a complicated series of transactions, Blixseth, who knows there's good money to be finagled out of the U.S. government, gained control of that little patch of paradise in the Lochsa River headwaters, set up a land holding company called the Western Pacific Timber Co., originally run out of Rancho Mirage, Calif. The mind reels with the irony of that name. Perhaps even creating too much cognitive dissonance for Blixseth, he moved the office to Ellensburg, Wash., and went about the business of coercing the U.S. Forest Service to trade the cut-over checkerboard, which has high conservation value (if not so many trees), for land they could clearcut.
The problem was that they ran into a group of citizens who thought that was a bad idea. Those citizens formed a group, Friends of the Palouse Ranger District, and organized against it. So, after another set of political contortions, instead of listening to the people, the Forest Service threw it into the lap of U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, to legislate, since there was no way Blixseth's wishes were going to come true.
The latest salvo in the chapter of the Upper Lochsa Land Exchange was a letter sent to the Senate Energy Committee by a group of retired USFS professionals. On that letter are the names of past environmental champions inside the agency like Tom Kovalicky, and even his apparent long-time nemesis, former "Timber Beast" Steve Petro from the Clearwater National Forest. Both were signees against the exchange.
What is stunning is that this is an election year. Yet the Upper Lochsa Land Exchange lurches forward, even with Idaho's U.S. representatives and senators whose seats are on the line. We are indeed run by the oligarchy. And it's not going to stop until we pass a constitutional amendment to get the money out of politics.

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Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"There's room at the top they are telling you still.
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill."

- John Lennon
  
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