Roundup of National Forest Sale Coverage

More below, but the most colorful quote award goes to an editorial in the Roanoke Times ("Give Bush an acre and he'll take a forest"): "It's not unlike a college student thinking about selling his printer to buy paper." This picture of NC's Croatan National Forest is by (and used by permission of) Christina Dulude of Durham. Her Flickr account is full of great pictures of wild North Carolina.

California's Barbara Boxer says: " Selling away our national heritage to pay for this Administration's fiscal irresponsibility is immoral and ignores your duty to be a sound steward of our national lands." A Missouri editorial describes the plan as yet another example of the Administration accepting meager short-term gain regardless of great long-term losses. And finally, the Charlotte Observer's editorial is titled "It's nuts to sell national forest lands to finance schools." (A highlight: "Viewing such outparcels as expendable assets requires a constipated view of the value of conservation.")

Comments

Coverage

I feel like this issue has not gotten the coverage it deserves by national blogs. Why is it that every liberal blogger out there is so fixated on the details of the Cheney incident while something as important as this slips by? I understand that the Cheney incident is telling of larger patterns within the administration and I recognize that it provides a useful analogy. However, the National Forest auction is not an indication of the administration's modus operandi, it is a consequence. This needs to be a rallying point; This needs to be all we hear about.

Thanks for doing your part, Lance.

You're right

but I think it's part of a trend of environmental issues not getting much coverage in the big-fish blogosphere. For the most part, those blogs are written by policy people (I'm thinking of Duncan Black, Josh Marshall, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, and Kevin Drum). They're more likely to pay attention to environmental issues with big policy solutions (like global warming) than to specific proposals. I may be wrong about that, but it's my sense.

It's a failing. It would be nice if there were a top-tier liberal blogger with a strong interest in the environment (but not such an interest that the blog becomes a marginalizable "eco-blog").

ScruHoo Covers it Too

Scrutiny Hooligans 'partners' w/ the News-Observer to call for action.

We'll just have to keep hammering away at it. Downing Street Memo style. By the end of the month we ought to see some play. Just keep on keeping on. Don't let them not talk about it.

Scrutiny Hooligans - http://www.scrutinyhooligans.us