A "Flyover Bureaucrat" Lands

It may be hard to believe, but some of the earliest politicians in the U.S. were known to be even more devious than those whose cunning we marvel at today. 

The lack of communications technology made that possible.  A candidate could deliver a speech in one town, take a horse and buggy trip to the next place, and give another speech contradicting his previous words. Without news media, he was unlikely to be caught.  News traveled so slowly that often elections were over before blocs of voters learned they had been duped.

That form of political dishonesty stopped around the end of the nineteenth century, or so we thought.  Telegraph, then telephone, networks made communication swift and reached eventually into every corner of the country.  Large news organizations, such as the Associated Press, linked media.  What a national candidate said in California could be filed by a newspaper reporter and broadcast by a radio station in Massachusetts within minutes.

Today’s politicians may fudge their statements and artfully dodge questions, but they know an outrageous statement made anywhere along the campaign trail will be exposed. They must be more careful than their predecessors about what they say. Or, so we thought.

The Geezer learned of recent campaign rhetoric in Idaho by the Republican candidates that certainly would concern many Americans.  One part of it might have been good for a laugh, something major media like to use to break up dismal news cycles. I’m pretty well tuned into various news sources, yet I heard of the Idaho statements only through a Facebook message from a former fellow employee of the U.S. Forest Service.

The Forest Service manages 20 million acres of National Forest land in Idaho.  Several million of those acres are Congressionally designated Wilderness, priceless wildlands where motorized vehicles are banned and resource extraction largely is prohibited.

Recently, according to the Idaho Statesman, Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Ron Paul proposed selling or transferring the federal lands to private interests or to the state. Mitt Romney got a little more specific. He advocated transferring management of the national forests to states to increase the revenues the lands generate.

There are only a few ways to increase revenues from National Forests.  One is to build roads into what now are roadless Wilderness areas, allow timber cutting there, and encourage mining and grazing, now limited to uses that were grandfathered when the lands were withdrawn from commodity production years ago.  Another is to abandon or seriously relax grazing permit systems and timber harvesting controls on all the lands. These regulations keep yields from the lands sustainable.

Wouldn’t you think millions of Americans would want to know that candidates for president advocated drastic changes in the protection and management of large chunks of our public lands?  Where were our media?  Perhaps they have been so decimated by economic problems that they have no space for such news.  You can bet the Statesman put the story on the wire.

Santorum provided the fodder for comedians.  Speaking to some 3,000 people in Boise, he said: “The federal government doesn’t care about it (Idaho), they don’t care about this land.  They don’t live here, they don’t care about it; we don’t care about it in Washington.  It’s just fly-over country for most of the bureaucrats in Washington, DC.”

Shortly thereafter, Tom Tidwell, Chief of the Forest Service, landed in Boise to discuss cooperative planning in Idaho after a flight from his office in Washington, DC. Santorum gave his speech at a rally held at Capital High School in Boise.  Tidwell is a graduate of Capital High School.

Tidwell began his Forest Service career as a fire management specialist for the Boise National Forest.  Later, he served as Regional Forester, the top administrator, for the service's Northern Region, which includes northern Idaho.  We could hardly expect him to know or care much about Idaho, could we?