“This is a tragedy.  I see more poverty and fewer job opportunities in Maine’s fragile rural economies if this decision stands.  I see a loss of 363,000 acres of conservation easements, an area twice the size of Baxter State Park.  This is not about the environment.  This is one more step in undermining Maine’s tradition of private property and the ability of Maine people to live and work in rural Maine.”  This quote is a portion of Commissioner Bill Beardsley’s response to the recent court decision that has halted the Plum Creek Development project on Moosehead Lake.  The Maine Attorney General is now appealing the decision.  On the surface this smacks of activism in the Judicial ranks once again.  The decision is a tragedy and the facts that back up Dr. Beardsley’s statements are nothing short of appalling.

When Commissioner Beardsley was seeking the gubernatorial nomination, this columnist had the opportunity to study his response to a questionnaire presented to him by the Red County Caucus.  A portion of his response was noteworthy as we look at this unfolding crisis.  In responding to a question concerning the damaging effect onerous regulatory compliance laws have on business in Maine, Beardsley states that “there is no place in my Maine for the 1992 Biodiversity Treaty of the United Nations that espouse turning Maine woods into neo-wilderness.”  He also warns “anti-business activists have personally told me that they do not need to win a single referendum, win a single lawsuit, or pass a single piece of legislation in order to stop private investment in rural Maine.  All they have said they need to do…is to create regulatory risk, uncertainty, adversarial atmosphere, and, especially, regulatory delay and they can drive capital investment and economic activity away.”  In other words, create enough headaches and a smart business will spend their monies in more profitable areas.  Environmental activists have successfully employed this tactic in rural Maine for decades.

The key to all of this is bio-diversity. What is bio-diversity?  Bio-diversity is the crown jewel to the environmentalist movement.  To the eco-worshipper, it is the messiah while global warming is the foretelling prophet.  Global warming was sent simply to prepare the way, to soften the public up to be more excepting to the edicts and teachings of bio-diversity.  To call this a religion is not an exaggeration.

Much of the regulatory laws, which bind Maine’s rural areas, are birthed from a faith-based science called conservation biology.  Pantheism, the belief that nature is a god, is at the foundation of conservation biology.  The co-founder of the Society of Conservation Biology, Michael Soule, wrote in their first publication, “We assume implicitly that environmental wounds inflicted by ignorant humans and destructive technologies can be treated by wiser humans and by wholesome technologies.”  The Clinton Administration, while railing against the dangers of Jerry Falwell and the religious right, implemented the edicts of the Pantheistic Conservation Biology into the policies of the land management agencies of the Federal Government.  The result was the decimation of farms, ranches and the general economies of rural America.

The core belief of Conservation Biology is that the only way to heal the land is to lock up private land and prevent “ignorant” humans from operating on that land.  This protects the bio-diversity.  From this belief came the “Wildlands Project” or now “Wildlands Network”.

The 1992 Bio-diversity Treaty was based on the “Wildlands Project”.  The United Nations formed a Convention of Biological Diversity to which 192 nations signed on.  Thankfully, the United States was the only hold out and that is owed largely to the work of four men, Tom McDonnell, Henry Lamb, Bob Voigt and Michael Coffman.  This group was able to acquire chapter 10 of the United Nations Global Bio-diversity Assessment, which was the basis of the Treaty.  Chapter 10 called for the establishment of a feudal government in which the proletariat (that’s us) would be so poor (they want us to be serfs) that they could do no damage to “Mother Earth”.  They also called for the reduction of the human population to 1 billion and the elimination of all private property.  These four men gave a copy of this to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson who presented it before the Senate just in time to stop the United States from joining.

I tell you this, and there is more coming, because the ones who stand in applause at the blocking of the Plum Creek project are the same who stand in support of bio-diversity.  So as their lawyer trills that this travesty is “thrilling”, she’s really saying that this keeps the “serfs” poor and the “ignorant” must bow to their “wisdom”.  Well, it is true. We are poor.  They have accomplished that, but be advised, pantheist, that we bow to no one, save the one true God, and He is not mother nature.

The President has kicked off his re-election campaign with a quote from a individual who says he doesn’t agree with the President on many things but he is still going to vote for him because….because (cue sound of crickets)….because (yes, I’m bringing back the crickets)…because (well, it’s Obama campaign promise time, that’s why)….because (you have to be careful with crickets this time of year, there’s not a lot to go around)….because (what? you’d rather have frogs?) …because ….ummmmmm …..becaaauuusssse………..  Yeah, he couldn’t think of a good reason either, but, kudos to the producers for editing out the part where he says, “Check, please?”  FELLOW CITIZENS, IT’S TIME, IT’S TIMMME, TO PLAYYYY….. REASONS TO VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT WITHOUT…having…a reason…tooo….?  Huh??  Ohh mannn, didn’t we just do this?!!

Yes, here come the Democrats again with their most powerful weapon.  Say a whole lot of nothing about nothing, the media will drool all over themselves trying to cover it, Chris “Tingle’s” leg will go numb again listening to a speech about nothing and we’ll be right back where this all started in ObamaMainia with nothing.  Democrats will hope to change things right back where they had it, doing nothing and sipping martinis from the slush fund filled with your life blood’s earnings.  In order to do this, Chuck “call everybody that disagrees with me the chattering class” Schumer has told his Democrat buds to just call everything the Republicans do “extreme”.  How’s that for meaningful dialogue?!  This with a Government shut down looming on the horizon.  I mean, imagine, shutting a government down that with every minute keeps driving us…. billions….of dollars…. in….debt….imagine shutting…that….thing down…hmmm.

Here in Maine, with a looming budgetary crisis of our own, Democrats answer to balancing the budget is to throw the proverbial “hissy” fit over a…mural.  I’ve always been amazed how quickly my books get balanced when I throw screaming temper tantrums on completely irrelevant issues.  Kick the walls a few times and those numbers, columns just line right up like a faulty soda machine.  With all this nonsensical behavior from the Democrats, one would expect their political demise would be imminent.  Spending $60,000.00 on a mural to themselves,  $54 million for a capital building renovation that Libby Mitchell never asked taxpayer permission for, which included taking the top off the building to lower her massive desk in and building an underground tunnel to keep their legislative hienies sheltered from the weather (now that’s representing Mainers) and $157,000.00 in gift certificate favors from the turnpike authority (wasn’t that money for fixing roads?) would normally be a death sentence for a political party in the face of a voting electorate as frugal as Maine’s, but, the Democrats have an ally, a knight in shining armor, if you will.

The moderate wing of the Republican Party is, once again, behaving out of force of habit.  After spending forty years licking the boots of the Democrats, they seem to have acquired a taste for it.  Rather than leading, some Republicans have been falling all over themselves trying to appease the minority Party. This past November voters declared war on the Democrat Party and handed Republicans an historic mandate to effect change in Augusta, unfortunately, Republicans forgot to keep their powder dry.  Moderates immediately moved to exploit Conservative fervor and, with back door manipulations, were able to complete a last ditch effort to maintain power.  The end result was a weak Senate President and a corrupt Speaker of the House.  Neither has been able to exact control and offer direction over his respective chamber of the people’s house, and the people’s business sits languishing as a result.  One is afraid of losing friends in the Democrat Party if he makes anyone angry, the other is afraid an investigation might be forthcoming if he ruffles the feathers of a fellow legislator.  Borrowing a page from the Democrat playbook, the latest in the Kennebec soap opera is to write an editorial blaming the Governor for the legislative inept lack of focus.  Yet, it is the job of legislative leadership not executive leadership to keep legislators focused.  President Raye and Speaker Nutting would be better served spending less time wringing their hands over perceived, or real, faux pas by the Governor, pandering to the media, placating the Democrats and more time concentrating on their job at hand, which is not to smooth over the rough edges of Governor LePage.  If the Republicans can maintain a majority in the coming election, it may be in the best interests of the legislature to seek better focused, more competent and more effective energetic leadership that will move with a sense of urgency that is more befitting and appropriate to the crisis that faces our beloved State.  In the mean time, it should be suggested to these moderates to sit their taxpayer-funded butts back at their desks, shut up and, in a quote from coach Bill Belichick, “DO YOUR JOB”!!!!  GET TO WORK!!!!  Mainers are desperate for motivated leaders.  Leadership is not waffling and pandering.  Leadership is doing your job and letting the chips fall where they may which is something the Governor, however crusty and crude, is, to this point, alone in accomplishing.

The Gipper

“The Founding Fathers established a system which meant a radical break from that which preceded it. A written constitution would provide a permanent form of government, limited in scope, but effective in providing both liberty and order. Government was not to be a matter of self-appointed rulers, governing by whim or harsh ideology. It was not to be government by the strongest or for the few. Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world — nothing more and nothing less.” —Ronald Reagan