Four day hearing on the future of the tar sands equipment megaloads are underway in Idaho’s capital city-
Residents on Highway 12 and recreation businesses are rallying against the megaloads.
Fate of ExxonMobil megaloads at stake in Boise hearings. By John Miller. AP in the Missoulian.
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.
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The Megaload -Canadian Tar Sands fiasco controversy reminds me of a similar story in our American history. Here is a paragraph that seems applicable from a new book I am reading: Savages and Scoundrels – The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire Through Indian Country – by VanDevelder:
‘The founder’s best ideas succeeded in lifting up to the world a new model of self-governance that would be a shinning city on a hill. The drafters of the Constitution believed they had conceived a government as sure-footed and balanced as any imagined by Locke. The document that was put to the thirteen legislatures for ratification was an achievement of revolutionary consequence for the people of the world to follow. If they dared. Not least among these consequences was the irony that the price for this great adventure would be underwritten, in large part, by the American Indians. For more than a century, the continent’s native people proceeded to give up life, land, liberty, and happiness to sate the material cravings of their European neighbors, until there was nothing left for them to concede.”
Just substitute MegaOil for government and Europeans for Indians, and the picture is just a re-run of the same trampling effect, same game plan, same results. Old game, new time. different people. Same principle.
And Townsend continues to sound prophetic..
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..
Immer,
I don’t follow. Where does “and Townsend continues to sound prophetic” come from?
Doryfun,
A loose analogy from the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Perhaps many applications in terms of wildlife, the environment, and the …