Bush Nominates Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne as Interior Secretary Governors, Idaho, Policy Issues

Continuing his all-out assault on environmental policy, President Bush nominated Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, today, as Secretary of the Interior.  Even the hometown Idaho Statesman knows the score.

President Bush picked Gov. Dirk Kempthorne to be his new interior secretary, selecting a pro-development Western Republican to push for more oil and gas drilling from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska's North Slope.

Say goodbye to ANWR, it will become the largest oilfield this side of Texas. Say goodbye to the forests of the Pacific Northwest and get ready for full implementation of Bush's "No Tree Left Behind" plan.

Bill Schneider of the New West Network provides more perspective on Kempthorne.

That’s probably an overstatement, but the fact is, Kempthorne, a former U.S. Senator who decided to run for governor instead a second term in the Senate, has consistently received a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters—except once, when he soared up to a 6 percent rating, getting one vote correct, something about funding a rocket for the space program that nobody remembers. But he has always received a 100 percent rating from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

[...]

Kempthorne prides himself as a consensus builder, but a few years ago, an amazing committee of timber companies and environmentalists reached a consensus and hatched a plan to restore grizzly bears in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, but Kempthorne was primarily responsible for influencing Norton to kill it, even though her own scientists in her own agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, favored it.

Raping the land is clearly no match for the Almighty Dollar. Almighty Dollar wins in a first round knock-out. Loggers will soon join oilmen in reaping the windfall under Bush's environmental policy. Bears and wolves will be hunted and shot (unless the hunters are as bad as Dick Cheney). Arlo Guthrie once sang, "This land is your land, this land is my land", but clearly Bush sees it as his land, and his land only.

kencamp | March 16, 2006 | Comment on This Post (1 so far) Permalink: Bush Nominates Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne as Interior Secretary Governors, Idaho, Policy Issues

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