Timber collaborators

It didn’t take Rep. Steve Danes long to adopt the ways of the typical Washington politician. He wears many hats, trying to be everything to everyone.

Montana’s timber industry has grown so accustomed to receiving federal welfare checks, tax breaks, special grants and earmarks that the entire Montana delegation gives them just about anything they demand. The cost to taxpayers and collateral damage to forest values that cannot be measured in worthless federal reserve notes is never calculated.

Instead of addressing the federal debt, secret domestic spying, banking fraud, higher education loans or unconstitutional drone assassinations, Rep. Daines is spending his congressional recess time in Montana pandering to crony capitalists in the timber industry.

Not to be outdone by Sen. Jon Tester’s Soviet-style, mandated national forest logging bill, Daines introduced his own bill with logging mandates. Daines trumps Tester by adding limitations on public participation laws and making Swiss cheese out of statutory protections for fish and wildlife species on the endangered species list.         

Timber-collaborators at the Montana Wilderness Association, Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Wilderness Society have been encouraging Daines to fall in behind Sen. Tester’s and Sen. Max Baucus’s bill to boost mandated logging subsidies. The psychological conditioning phase of the campaign to deregulate and privatize our public forests is in full swing.

Rep. Daines is behaving like just another hack politician, covering up five generations of waste, fraud and abuse by the federal government. If you love our national forests, send these clowns a message today.

Steve Kelly

Bozeman