[at-l] Maine land buyout

[mfuller@somtel.com (Malcolm Fuller)]

kahley wrote:


> The irony that I see is that for sooo long, some of us
> viewed big lumber company's as the ultimate evil...makers
> of profit by logging the land. So now they say "OK...we 
> are outta here" and we find there are worse things in the
> woods than clear cuts.

This headline caught my eye at the local beer store this
morning:

http://www.bangornews.com/cgi-bin/article.cfm?storynumber=39238

I was only half-joking when I wrote the following a couple
of months ago:

[rewind]

It appears that the Mainers who wanted to put the kibosh to
the timber industry are finally getting what they asked for.
Sure, the industry was in decline anyway, but one wonders how
much the recent political pressure and uncertainty have hastened
the arrival of this day.

Had Jonathan Carter and others been *smart*, they would've worked
instead to implement the same Soviet-style protections for the paper
industry that American agriculture enjoys. Wrap the issue in red,
white and blue rather than green, and the checks will come flying.
Maybe even bus Willie Nelson and whatever's left of Lynyrd Skynyrd
in to do a "Mill-Aid" benefit concert for whatever the bumwipe
plant in Millinocket is called today.

Just think: the paper industry could've been frozen in subsidized
amber, and the Maine tradition of "public access to private lands"
secured for countless generations to come -- or for at least as
long as the federal Mohair subsidy.

-MF