[at-l] A Question Of Trail (Complete Resend)

[RoksnRoots@aol.com (RoksnRoots@aol.com)]

texas12step@hotmail.com writes:


> 12 Step) Property rights are not incompatible with protecting the
> trail from development so long as you're willing to bear
> the true cost of preserving wilderness.


    ~~~  I don't understand this. Are you saying we need to pay adequately 
for these lands? Or are you suggesting that preserving a narrow corridor in a 
remote range that wasn't ever prone to development, but is now a good 
political proving ground for extortionate land ransoming, is somehow a threat 
and needs to be resolved on the terms of a system that when given free reign 
will inevitably result in destruction of virgin wilds? Again, the AT is meant 
to spark thought over of the true cost of *not* preserving wilderness...


> 
> 
> There is also a weird anti-environmental trend
> > happening that is the sad result of the public being convinced
> > that it's a choice between $ and environment.
> 
> 12 Step)   Aren't you guilty of promoting this belief with talk of 
> "greasy bucks" and suchlike?


     ~~~  A buck becomes greasier and greasier when high powered, politically 
connected lawyers make back room deals paid for by the developer while the 
nation's showcase wilderness corridor gets short shrift for political 
expediency by modern-day politicians who have lost their sense of 
responsibility for the Trail and sold out for short-term popularity. These 
people have aggressively attacked the AT and what it stands for. If you want 
to see guilt, go look at the local towns peoples' words in the NPS review; 
look at the developer's manipulation of public opinion and false speculations 
over ski-area development he never intended; look at the meager, mild 
reaction by ATC to a serious incursion in a prime AT location. You can't 
possibly be seriously posing that this is our fault and we deserved being 
hornswoggled by what is probably a predesigned and approved regional plan to 
employ locals in home construction at the Trail's expense? You tell me then, 
what would it have taken to preserve the AT on Saddleback? 
     Remember here 12 Step, a multi-million dollar taxpayer payout was made 
here to a man who is now changing his proposal in midstream and plans to 
max-out under Saddleback. What were you saying about *us* again?  



> 
> >                                               Pure politics
> > and a sad circumstance of Americans coming to the choice
> > between progressive change and the same old way and choosing
> > the latter.
> 
> >     Mr Breen appealed to greed and won.
> 
> 12 Step)  This is true. It is also equally true that trail advocates
> appealed to greed and *lost.* They acted in the hope that
> if enough of them petitioned the government, they'd get the 
> mountain and a chunk of the surrounding viewshed without 
> having to pay for it. If the Trailplace campaign was any
> indication, most petitioners couldn't even restrain their
> *greed* to limiting the use of eminent domain to condemning 
> only the minimum amount of land "mandated" by "law."


     ~~~   Without having to pay for it? What was given to Breen? There's 
strong evidence that Breen had no means to build out that entire mountain. Do 
you understand what that means? I'll tell you. That means a scam was 
perpetuated in order to manipulate public feelings towards the AT in order to 
fetch a higher price for his deal. We are not talking about a person who 
understands the AT's mission and humbly respects it, we are possibly talking 
about aggressive Trail destruction for profit with a big threat being posed 
in order to raise the ransom. I am a person who does not describe the 
precious and unique quest to preserve an east coast wilderness corridor as 
"greed". That is an obscene interpretation. The Trail was designed to be a 
place where man and his ways were prevented from doing what is being done 
here to a protected zone. Why? Just look what happened here!!!
     Your last sentence reveals how little you understand about the AT. The 
AT is more than just a thin corridor. The many people reached by 'Walk In The 
Woods' begins to hint at it. What do I mean by that? I mean that the AT was 
supposed to be held dear in the consciousness of Americans. Your wording 
doesn't come close to touching on that. I can tell you one thing the AT isn't 
supposed to be,  -that is, grinding ski machinery built up to the brink of a 
former AT sweet spot in Maine and one of its highlights...



> 
> 
> 12 Step)   Don't try to dignify the acquisition of Saddleback by
> calling it a trade. Trade is not coerced.


     ~~~  And nature preservation as a concept is not dealt with or seen in 
these primitive terms. You seem to deal from a legal concept central 
viewpoint. If you want to see a fine example of the culmination of such 
thinking go to urban New York and New Jersey. There is a place where the 
status quo used the methods you espouse to determine what was right by their 
sense of rights and propitiousness. There ain't much left in way of nature 
down there, if you haven't noticed. These things don't happen in a vacuum. 
Again, are you leaving the future of the AT up to a man who submits a false 
speculation and doesn't give a rat's ass about the AT? What is your 
suggestion for preserving the AT on Saddleback then? Is anybody who desires 
allowed to propose a threat to the AT on their terms and then label the AT's 
trying to preserve itself as "coercion". That seems like base reasoning to me 
and sorrily devoid of any mention of the AT's higher conservation ethic. The 
AT has to be where it is. It has no choice...
> 
> 
> 12 Step)  Really now, why do you care? It's not like it was *your* money
> or anything. Besides, what are "greasy bucks" to you compared
> to an undeveloped Saddleback? Are you saying that all that
> talk about the preciousness of the mountain was just so much
> horseschumer?


     ~~~   You're kidding (aren't you)? Intelligent people who care about the 
AT know why that is important. This precedence will make it difficult to 
acquire buffer zones in the future. Those are silly questions you ask. 
Anybody who has a sound sense of the AT *knows* that what has happened here 
will hurt the Trail. Just the fact that Saddleback will not be as virginally 
wild as it is now is reason enough. I mean, that's fairly simple. What are 
you arguing here, that it is OK and understandable that the Trail be boxed in 
and diminished by encroachment? What kind of position is that to take for the 
AT?  I'm sorry, but you should probably find out more about the AT and its 
mission before you ask such questions...



> 
> >                  I'm sure the ridiculous overpayment/ransom he
> > collected from the same irate taxpayers you cite here is now
> > being used to fund a huge sprawling development on Saddleback
> > in the AT's lap.
> 
> 12 Step)  I did not refer to taxpayers.


   ~~~    Nor did you refer to the AT's written conservation intention...  


> 
> 12 Step)  Look, I don't think much of the Breens. I suspect that many
> of his supporters on the property rights side of things don't
> either. His use of political pull to take advantage of the
> government's deep pockets showed that he wasn't resisting on
> principle, but rather was playing the same game as the land
> grabbers. It's certainly not how I would've played the hand
> were I in Breen's position.


    ~~~  The purpose of the AT is to preclude the result we are seeing here 
on Saddleback and preserve a rural environment for *all* Americans. I 
guarantee you, with things the way they are, those areas will be 
self-rewarding once they are preserved! You are only falling short of the 
necessary end result in your analysis...




> 
> 12 Step)  But that doesn't mean that his property rights are forfeit
> and shouldn't be defended.


     ~~~  What is happening right here is the exact same coal that was 
burning in Benton's pipe up on Stratton. Nothing's changed. Breen, I have no 
sympathy for him. He bought that land twenty years ago from Georgia Pacific. 
He wasn't stupid, he knew what was on that land and what it meant. He simply 
has no respect for the AT and what it stands for. He went for an AT kill on 
that mountain and got it on a political platter. If you want to soften that 
by running it through definitions of property rights and other excuses that 
take us further and further from the real issue in order to make bulldozing 
Saddleback acceptable, go ahead. That to me is anti-AT reasoning and 
something I abhor... 



> 
> > How this comes down to us inciting the locals is beyond me
> > considering the circumstances we face now.
> 
> 12 Step)  The locals aren't fools. They saw what was happening and 
> realized that if Breen's property rights could be trampled
> in the name of protecting a footpath and its viewshed, then
> anyone's can. I know you believe it's irrelevant, but trail
> advocacy is earning itself a bad reputation in my neck of
> the woods. This is why the IAT in Maine is a road walk on
> public rights of way, while the ITS is allowed to pass
> through privately owned backcountry. A full Monty view of
> wind turbines from Saddleback may be another consequence.


   ~~~   First, the AT is a defined and recognized corridor with a specific 
cause. Saying everybody's land rights were threatened is Wise-Use horsedoo. 
Read the locals words in the NPS review. Those people were flat out 
brainwashed by both Breen and political manipulators who convinced them AT 
radicals were coming to take their families. From the words I read, I would 
say you were being generous with their motivations. Myself, I think they fell 
for pie in the sky money promises and got the fever in tight times. Breen, in 
the meantime, promised them a cut of his huge take but then turned around and 
put the hill up for sale. Are you seeing the picture here? "The locals aren't 
fools"??? 
       What is happening is the people who are putting the *real* screws on 
the locals have succeeded in convincing them that preserving a national 
scenic trail is going to lead them to ruin. In the meantime, developers 
building beyond water supply capacity have no threat to their "reputation". 
They don't suffer the same moral scrutiny you give the AT here.


> 
> > If anything your points validate a need to have taken harder
> > action (which is what TP was saying btw...)
> 
> 12 Step) Like what?


    ~~~ Better Trail website participation for a desired goal. There's a time 
to ditch the bad feelings and egos and get together for the Trail's sake. 
Saddleback should not have been sacrificed. By doing so the long-term AT 
outcome was compromised, not improved. We should have gone to the trenches 
and maybe Breen's ploy would have backfired. What do we have now?
   


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