How Do We Stop Guys Like This?

Excerpt from today's - 10/30/05 - NY Times Editorial, "Pombo Time":


...
Mr. Pombo, of course, makes no apologies. First elected in 1992 - he was a first-term city councilman in Tracy, Calif., at the time - he is philosophically an outspoken product of the extreme property rights movement. He once liked to claim, falsely as it turned out, that his rights had been trampled by environmentalists and by the provisions of the Endangered Species Act.
...
In September, he engineered floor approval of a bill that would completely undermine the Endangered Species Act, which is something he has wanted to do since arriving in Washington. And last week, in a tour de force, he engineered committee approval of a budget bill that is ostensibly meant to raise federal revenues but in fact represents a major assault on the public lands.

In its original form Mr. Pombo's bill called for the sale of 15 national parks. He withdrew that idea - a stunt, he says - as well as the notion of selling mineral rights within the parks. He now proposes allowing mining companies to buy lands on which they have staked claims. This practice, known as "patenting," was banned in 1995, and under present rules companies can only lease federal land.

Mr. Pombo says his proposal will help the federal budget because companies will have to pay $1,000 an acre to buy the land. But the provision is so vaguely drawn - companies, for instance, will not have to show that the land contains valuable minerals - that it could potentially expose hundreds of millions of acres, including the national forests, to development. This has nothing to do with mining, and everything to do with stealing land that is owned by the American public.
...


All species are sacred.

Stop Pombo before he wipes out the public trust, the beauty of our nation, and coexistence and duty we have with the earth and its other inhabitants!