I found the quotes that follow this bit, some time ago, while reading about Theodore Roosevelt’s life in politics. He is famous for some of his speeches and talks, and although the world has changed drastically since his time on earth, it’s clear to me that some things – politics being one of them- never change.
This morning has been one of conflicting emotions. Surprise. Anger. Confusion as to why the voters who did bother to vote ( 48% of registered voters is the sickly number being tossed about) chose the party they did. Especially surprising to me was the vote in Prince George. Let’s see….most of the trees are dead – beetle kill. Mills are closed. People are out of work , and are losing their homes, their equipment and in some cases, their families. All of it is a direct result of the Liberal governments action over the last few years, and yet somehow the fools managed to get elected again.
Go figure.
All I can say is this.
Less than half the people voted who could do so in this province. The ones that did were split, but the Liberals still won.Neither party got 52% of those registered voters who chose not to vote, and those are the people we need. Every single one of them.
Now that Gordon Campbell is back in, the pundits are talking about how the people who elected him will feel when he suddenly announces that the economy is in far,far worse condition than he previously anticipated, and starts whacking away with his budget cuts.
And according to this Tyee story that ran several weeks ago, there will have to be cuts. It is impossible for him to deliver the budget platform he campaigned on unless he has some sort of goose that craps hundred dollar bills. And then there is the reality that you can look forward to making your $8.00 an hour for the next four years…. But the issue that bothers me as much as the economy and the resulting announcements we can expect from the Libs as they start chopping, is the one surrounding our environment.
I’m looking forward to hearing what the environment minister and Campbell have to say about that report on Run of the River projects that they refused to talk about until after the election.
Well, it’s after the election now. Let’s hear it.
Until then, read the following quote from dear Teddy R., keeping in mind that these words were said nearly one hundred years ago. How pertinant they still are , at least to this years election result.
“Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying ‘the game belongs to the people.’
So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people.
Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations.
We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us – not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted.
As such, the object of government is the welfare of the people.
Conservation means development as much as it does protection.
I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.
This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.”
And to Carol James, who in the most beautiful, heartfelt speech last night, accepted not defeat, but greater challenges that remain to be conquered. Never have I been more proud to be in support of one candidate than I was of Carol last night. What a woman, and my hope is to see many more candidates who have that passion join the NDP. They need strong voices, and fearless candidates who can grab the publics attention and demonstrate valid skills to govern the province.
The election may be over, but the next journey has just begun, and I plan to be there. See you in 2013, in the arena.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause;
Westcoast Views with Laila Yuile 
It amazes me how you can make the leap that dead trees and a lack of demand for wood are tied to the current provincial government.
Trees are dying because the lodgepole pine is getting artificially old because we fight forest files in the interior so little towns don’t burn up. The beetles are just doing what we are not allowing fires to do.
And market forces are closing our mills because, like it or not, we live in a capitalist society and with everybody else in the economic dumps we are just following along (The corporate greed in the US that precipitated and exasperated all this is another issue).
I love how people on both sides of the political fence love to exaggerate things for their own agendas and dogmas.
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” Trees are dying because the lodgepole pine is getting artificially old because we fight forest files in the interior so little towns don’t burn up. The beetles are just doing what we are not allowing fires to do.”
This little gem doesn’t even make sense, ” Ger in New West” . Come back when you have familiarized yourself with our wonderful LIBERAL forest policies, and how they’ve changed over the years. The Premier himself doesn’t value our forestry workers and our wood product, as demonstrated when he used IMPORTED wood in the GATEWAY signs. Why don’t you find out how much raw wood is being exported out of our province to mills in the states and overseas, and how the entire beetle debacle was mismanaged from day 1 when the province was not heeding the warnings and call for action and help from interior mayors, residents and forestry workers.
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Actually, I do know what I’m talking about. I am a professional forester involved in planning and policy issues.
Yes the Gateways sign stuff looked bad – but how much wood did it really amount to? And was it really some lower minion’s decision to make that purchase? And put so much emphasis on that one item? Come on…
And you don’t explain the beetle tie to me. In fact the current outbreak started in Tweedsmuir Park under your beloved NDP’s reign in the 90’s. There was talk of trying to do something about it then but your favourite party wouldn’t allow touching those precious trees in the park. Personally, however, I think that would-of only delayed the inevitable. Biologically Lodgepole Pine trees get old at around 150 years of age and, as I said before, they are a fire dependant species (even their cone are made to open up by fire) and because we’ve done such a good job at fighting forest fires many of the interior forests are old and ripe for an epidemic of pests like the beetle. Please tell me what the government could do about that except harvest the wood quicker!
Also you put such an emphasis in log exports – in fact less than 5% wood volume is exported from Crown land. Most of the exports come from either private land on Vancouver Island or First Nations areas. At least with exports a few forestry workers are employed in harvesting, transportation, and shipping thus able to support their families. The alternative is nobody working because, in these market conditions, most of our mills produce wood that is too expensive to sell. How do we force people in the world to buy our wood prices that they can currently buy at lower rates elsewhere?
Do I give the liberals a 100% approval grade all the things they’ve done? Of course not! There are many things I shake my head at. For instance I think they let the private lands associated with TFLs be pulled out of Weyerhaeuser and Western Forest Products TFLs at too low a price. I think it still should be allowed but we, as taxpayers, weren’t compensated enough for allowing it to happen in my opinion.
I don’t believe, however, the Liberals are anti-forest worker as you like to imply. It is all just the economic state we find ourselves in as a region that depends upon exports.
Putting NDP in power, however, would make me very nervous. The few policies they released when they weren’t doing the negative ‘Gordon Campbell’ ads (it is like they were trying to make a swear word out of his name and I think it backfired on them) would add a lot of debt and discourage investment here. You like to put forward your nice looking kids in your blog but they would be the ones to pay for the debts created from our excesses. I believe we should be more financially disciplined than that. (Yes – I agree the Olympics are an expensive boondoggle we don’t really need – but, as I said before, I don’t like everything the Liberals have done)
By the way – being a type of forest worker I will know exactly how it will feel to be unemployed in short order because I will be joining those ranks too.
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Done such a good job of fighting forest fires? How is fire suppresion such a good thing in forestry? The great fire in the Kelowna area a few years ago was due in part to poor forest practices and policy. No controlled burns for years and as a result there was so much fuel in the forest that it burned like a torch. This is documented as a large reason.
Poor forest practices may very well have started with the NDP- I cant say.
But I do know that the forestry policies in the last 8 years under the liberals directly impacted the spread . When it became apparent that the spread was vaster than previously thought, nothing was done to try an halt it. Some critics say that had they instituted cuts and burns before the beetles took wing, the damage would not have been as severe. This all boils down to faulty forest policy, and you cant go blame the NDP in the 90’s for what the Liberals have been doing for the last 8 years, no matter how hard you try.
Now the beetle kill has been filling up the lots of what mills remain open, sitting and rotting. And what is going to happen now to the interior and the northern areas where thousands of acres remain covered in tinder dry beetle kill wood?
The thought makes me shiver. The resulting fires in a hot dry summer could make the Kelowna fire look like a spark in comparison.
You laugh at such a small thing like one of Campbells minions ordering imported wood, but come on! What does that say? The truth of the matter will be shown in the 4 years to come. People who voted Liberal thinking he will guide us through the choppy waters ahead will be in for a shock post 2010 when the true cost of the deals he had done start rolling in.
Sorry to hear you’ll be unemployed soon, hope you can get another job, unlike the majority of forest workers,otherwise you just might have to find out how impossible it is to survive on the $8.00 an hour that Campbell thinks is so suitable.
Explain to me why cities like 100 hundred mile house, Quesnel and Prince George felt abandoned when they asked for help with fighting the pine beetle? Why? Talk to those people actually living in the thick of it, their mayors and councils, and you hear
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