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Fifty years of designated wilderness

Two weeks ago marked the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Wilderness Act.

It applies to federal designation of remote areas, not to states. States can create their own wild areas, and some do. States closest to human populations and land development seem to also be most assertive about setting aside large areas for people and animals to enjoy.

I enjoy wilderness a lot. Hunting, camping, hiking, fishing, and exploring are all activities I do in designated wilderness.

Every year I hunt Upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains, in a large designated wilderness area. Pitching a tent miles in from the trail head, the only person I see is a hunting partner. Serenity like that is tough to find unless you already live in northern Vermont, Maine, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming or Alaska. It’s a valuable thing, that tranquility.

This summer my young son sat in my lap late at night, watching shooting stars against an already unbelievably starry sky. Loons cried out all around us. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves on the birch trees above us and caused the lake to lap against our rocky shore.

Only by driving a long way north, and then canoeing on a designated wilderness lake, and camping on a designated wilderness island in that lake, were we able to find such peace and quiet. No one else was anywhere around us. We were totally alone, with our camp fires, firewood chores, fishing rods, and deep sleeps in the cold tent.

These are memories likely to make my son smile even as he ages and grapples with responsibilities and challenges of adulthood. We couldn’t do it without wilderness.

Wilderness is a touchstone for a frontier nation like America. Wilderness equals freedom of movement, freedom of action. The same sort of freedoms that instigated insurrection against the British monarchy. American frontiersmen became accustomed to individual liberty unlike anything seen in Western Civilization. They enshrined those liberties in our Constitution.

Sure, there are some frustrations associated with managing wilderness.

Out West, wilderness designation has become a politicized fight over access to valuable minerals under the ground. Access usually involves roads, and roads are the antithesis of a wild experience.

Given the large amount of publicly owned land in the West, I cannot help but wonder if there isn’t some bartering that could go on to resolve these fights. Take multiple use public land and designate it as wilderness, so other areas can responsibly yield their valuable minerals. Plenty of present day public land was once heavily logged, farmed, ranched, and mined, but those scars are long gone.

You can hike all day in a Gold Mine Creek basin and find one tiny miner’s shack from 1902. All other signs have washed away, been covered up by new layers of soil, etc. So there is precedent for taking once-used land and letting it heal to the point where we visitors would swear it is pristine.

Out East, where we have large hardwood forests, occasionally, huge valuable timber falls over in wilderness areas, and the financially hard-pressed locals could surely use the income from retrieving, milling, and selling lumber from those trees. But wilderness rules usually require such behemoths to stay where they lay, symbols of an old forest rarely seen anywhere today. They can be seen as profligate waste, I understand that. I also understand that some now-rare salamanders might only make their homes under these rotting giant logs, and nowhere else.

Seeing the yellow-on-black body of the salamander makes me think of the starry night sky filled with shooting stars. A rare thing of beauty in a world full of bustle, noise, voices, and concrete. For me, I’ll take the salamander.

BLM giving open land a black eye

The Bureau of Land Management was established as a temporary holding entity, dealing more with water management than common natural resources and the plants and animals living on the land under its care.

Now, BLM has become the poster child of Big Government Gone Wild, using armed force and the threat of lethal force, let alone more prosaic forms of terrifying government coercion, to achieve dubious policy goals.  Many of these policy goals grate on the public, who perceive them as being at best ancillary to BLM’s mission, if not at odds with the multiple-use land management models the agency is supposed to implement.

Citizens, who own their American government, chafe at official signs that say “No Trespassing – BLM Property,” as though the very taxpayers underwriting BLM are alien invaders upon that government-managed ground.

Job #1 would be to actually communicate with the citizenry about the agency’s policy goals, the underpinnings and purpose of its policies, the reasons for protecting some landscapes from vehicles.  Certainly, BLM can achieve better ways to manage environmentally sensitive land, and perhaps asking the citizenry for ideas would take the agency into new, good places.  Many users of federally-managed lands are actually savvy about Leave No Trace, and most others at least care, even if they do not yet know how to minimally impact an area.

BLM’s heavy hand in the supposed name of environmental quality is giving all open land a black eye.  As a result of BLM’s foolish behavior, all kinds of questions are being asked about public land, not just about how it is managed, but why it even exists.  Perhaps it is a good discussion to have, and I certainly stand on the side of having those public spaces, but so far the BLM is just pouring gasoline on the fire, which threatens to overtake all public lands.

Part of any discussion should include What Next about BLM.  The agency has clearly outlived its established purpose.  My instinctive thinking is to divide up its lands among the agencies best suited to manage each piece – National Park Service for this heavily used area, National Forest for this timbered area, and so on.  And no, conveying some of these lands to states is not a bad thing, so long as the deeds carry perpetual stipulations that the lands cannot be sold to private owners or converted to some other use.  Mining, timbering, preservation of historic artifacts, water management, passive and active recreation, scenic beauty, ecological purposes…states can do many of these as well as a federal agency, and all without having snipers in fatigues pointing guns at citizens.

If nothing else, getting rid of BLM to get rid of its ridiculous snipers and armed thug culture is a worthy step.  Not only is that insane behavior unworthy of a representative government, it is unrelated to the purpose of protecting open land in the first place.

Historic win in York, Pa

Tonight, candidate Scott Wagner beat all the odds and won a contrived special election by write-in. The Pa-28th state senate district is in his hands.

As I’ve experienced myself, when your own party decides you’ve served enough of a purpose, or not enough, the people you were loyal to can try to dump you overboard. Such happened to Scott.

But tonight, Scott bested both the Democrats and the Republican establishment. It’s a historic win by any standard, especially by write-in.  Congratulations to Scott Wagner and to his campaign manager Ryan Shafik.

Freedom of opportunity reigns.

Senate ceding its role to president: Chaos

The US Senate has recently changed rules that have helped maintain America’s checks-and-balances system of government for over 150 years.

In the interest of bolstering the executive branch’s incredible reaches for off-limits power, the senate has ceded its role as being a legislative check.  The senate is now an adjunct of the executive branch.

Recent senate rules change allowed radical, far out of the mainstream federal judges to be confirmed.  They in turn go on to help the executive branch implement its unconstitutional actions.

Assuming we get through this crisis without a civil war, what happens if a new president is elected from the other party, and he or she wants to correct the damage done to America, liberty, and democracy over the past five years? When that president employs the same exact methods, will the current party cede the field, acknowledge that politics is a two-way street, and relinquish their rights?

No, they won’t.  They will fight like hell, use their media allies to bolster them in the public eye, and accuse the new party in power of all kinds of contraventions.  Hypocrisy? Yes.  It is the norm in politics, apparently.

If amnesty is granted to 8-10 million illegal immigrants, and they become voters, then the two-party system is over.  America will become artificially dominated by a single party bent on controlling the citizenry through gun confiscation, NSA spying, and more onerous socialism designed to end our capitalistic system.

I, for one, will go down fighting, if necessary.  I hope you, too, will join your liberty-loving fellow citizens and either prevent the country from descending into chaos through successful political work, or prepare to meet that chaos in an organized way.

Cascade Effect

When a snow avalanche plows over a mountainside, everything in its path falls, breaks, bends, severely, or gets swept under and away.

Avalanches do not happen all at once. First there’s a little spill of snow at the top. That bumps something larger down below, and so on. A cascade effect gathers momentum, and pretty soon the whole shebang is blasting full steam ahead.

Such is the state of the administration in Washington. Historic scandals at the IRS, Dept. of Justice, State Dept., and so on are building up steam. Partisans are ignoring them all, pooh-poohing them, hoping voters don’t pay attention. But eventually, that cascade will reach its full force.

Rum and Coke Friday, in honor of liquor store privatization

Pennsylvania is about to join the 20th century (yes, the 20th) with liquor privatization. Only PA and Utah have state stores…the Quakers and the Mormons….
Is it a core function of government to sell liquor? Uh…no.
So I am having a rum and Coke to toast the Corbett Administration and the state representatives and senators who they worked closely with to achieve this necessary milestone. Thanks!

State Representative Calls Police Twice Over Inquisitive Citizen Opposing Gun Vote

By Josh First
March 7, 2013

Just over a week ago, newly minted New York State Representative Didi Barrett (NY-106th) twice called police in a thinly veiled attempt to have an inquisitive citizen intimidated by Red Hook police for exercising his Constitutional right to petition the government. Nope, this is not made up, folks; it is real and it is real-time. It illustrates that the gun control debate is not about guns. It is not even about crime. It is about controlling citizens; that is its purpose and the goal of its proponents. When the police show up at your door or pull you over because someone in an official position said something about you, anything could happen.

Beginning in early January and extending into late February, Chris Stehling, a plumber from Red Hook, NY, visited Barrett’s local office several times to explain his opposition to her position on New York’s anti-gun SAFE Act, and then her recent vote in support of that law. This new law is so restrictive that even most on-duty police officers are non-compliant and potential felons. The heavily rushed and highly defective law must now be “fixed,” and it is already going through a new amendment process, facts that in Stehling’s view indicated a flawed legislative process begging a few more changes.

Stehling tells me that he was respectful and professional when he first visited Barrett’s office, requesting a meeting with her. Asked by staff what the subject was that he wished to discuss, Stehling explained his opposition to his state representative’s vote for the flawed law. Barrett was unavailable, he was told, and “Don’t call us, we will call you” was their parting response.

Several days after he left, a town detective, Tom D’Amicantonio, knocked on Stehling’s door, saying that Barrett had called the police because her office “had concerns” about him.

“I asked Tom ‘What concerns?’, says Stehling, who is a steady, jovial, and articulate guy on the phone, and on a friendly first-name basis with the small-town local police.

After a forty-minute “amicable” conversation, and taking a statement from Stehling, who wanted to see his representative face-to-face, the detective departed, and left Stehling with a feeling of now being victimized twice by Representative Barrett: Once by her careless vote for the poorly written law, and now by her attempt to persecute and intimidate him for daring to ask her about it.

Stehling called a friend, and they returned to Barrett’s office the next morning, calmly seeking both to schedule a meeting and requesting an explanation about why the detective had been called. In addition, Stehling had a friend on the phone who could hear the conversation in the office. Apparently while they were talking to a staffer, someone else in the office was on the phone, calling the police again, because when Stehling returned to his car outside and began to drive away, the town’s police sergeant, Patrick Hildenbrand, pulled him over.

“The sergeant came over to my truck, and he asked me what was going on with Representative Barrett, and we explained our experiences visiting her office, including my First Amendment right to talk to my elected officials,” says Stehling.

After talking with Stehling and taking statements from both of his friends, Sergeant Hildenbrand reportedly later called Barrett’s office, explaining that Stehling was well within his Constitutional rights to petition his elected officials, to visit their offices, and request a meeting with his representative. Is that not the role of an elected official in a representative democracy, after all? The US Constitution’s First Amendment gives citizens the right to petition their government, and to speak freely.

Eventually Stehling was granted a meeting with NY Representative Barrett at her distant Albany office, which he conveniently visited after a pro-Constitutional rights rally at the NY state capitol that same day.

“She was dismissive about our concerns, even when we presented the fact that the new law criminalizes most on-duty police officers [because of their higher capacity guns] and it punishes law-abiding citizens but not criminals,” says Stehling.

Three weeks ago I debated Shira Goodman of CeaseFirePA (http://video.witf.org/video/2335658815), a gun prohibitionist group, on a WITF live call-in TV show. Several times during the debate Shira earnestly exclaimed her avid support for Second Amendment rights, which she is working overtime to destroy. It is now a common tactic to proclaim support for something you obviously despise and undermine. And thus America spawns people like Representative Didi Barrett, the Cuomo-endorsed New York State “Assemblyperson” who believes in getting elected to office, but not in being accountable to the citizens whose consent places her there; in fact, she evidently believes in using the police to intimidate or jail her political opponents.

Gun rights advocates have long worried that their opponents were seeking domination and control of the citizenry, and not control of crime. Representative Didi Barrett’s actions just showed us that concern is valid and true. But Didi Barrett tilted her hand too soon, though, because this kind of heavy-handed response from government should be more common only after Americans have been disarmed, and not before. Those citizens on the fence about this issue can now make an even more informed choice about which way to vote. Vote for freedom, folks, not for the un-American abuse of power that motivates people like Didi Barrett.

Listen to Chris Stehling’s other interview, on Sheryl Thomas’s radio program, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sherylthomas/2013/02/28/ny-gun-owner-harassed-by-assemblywomans-office

Stay involved in the conversation at www.joshfirst.com and on our Facebook page

Freedom! Braveheart Arrives in Pennsylvania

What joy to buy beer at Giant. What freedom!
Why shouldn’t a free people be able to buy beer easily, especially for a celebration like SuperBowl Sunday?

Historically, beer and spirits were widely available in early America. Ben Franklin quipped that beer was proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. How could a nation conceived in liberty become so shackled?

Last week Pennsylvania took a step toward more freedom, when governor Tom Corbett proposed to liberate alcohol from the clutches of government stores. America is based on competition and free enterprise, and government has no business doing business, so it’s a good thing to see this issue finally floated in a meaningful and substantive way.

Pennsylvania is one of only two states nationwide to be in the alcohol business. Obviously there’s no strength in those numbers.

Some political observers say this is about a public employee union. Say what? Who with a straight face can argue that the citizens are best served under this current state of state control? All other issues fade away, vanish, under real considerations.

Good luck, Guv.

We who join Ben Franklin in his observation that a beer or tip o’ the cup are part of being human tip our cup to you, Governor.

Obama Admits: I Support Redistribution of Wealth

When Obama’s supporters say he is not a Marxist, not a socialist, not a communist, all you have to do is listen to him in his own recorded voice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3aGJfDSg4

Josh First begins campaign for State Senate

With Tuesday’s historic decision by the Supreme Court to overturn the recent redistricting, the former PA – 15th senate district remains intact.  That means that I am now back in a district from which senator Jeff Piccola is retiring, and for which I can run.

The Pennsylvania 15th Senate District is a beautiful place, really the heartland of America. It also includes Harrisburg, the state capital and one of the major Underground Railroad thruways, with one of the nation’s most majestic public edifices, the capitol building.
It is an honor to declare my candidacy for the 15th Senate District.
Please let me know if you can volunteer to circulate petitions, which are due by February 15th.

Email: info@joshfirst.com, or call 717 232-8335.

Thank you!

–Josh

Josh First