Jack Wayne Chappell
Greenmail. Not too many people know what that is. Greenmail is the same as Blackmail, except in Jon Marvel’s case, it’s legal. Twenty million dollars worth of legal, in the case where El Paso Corp, the nation’s largest pipeline company, agreed to put up that much money to preserve ‘sagebrush habitat’.
Most anyone who knows anything at all about western lands knows that sagebrush is a high volume drinker of range water, and a toxic plant to grazing mammals. In the western U.S. there are over four hundred million acres of the stuff, in linear square miles. My new term for the environmentalists, in bureau-speak, is ASA, which stands for Actual Surface Area. Triple the size of the sagebrush slopes, and it’s closer to seven hundred million acres of sagebrush (in actual surface area).
We need more sagebrush they say, to save the sage hens that do eat sagebrush leaves, which is only part of their diet. True, sagebrush is non-toxic to certain birds, and does contribute to holding together a watershed, but when sagebrush overgrows, it is a terrible fire hazard. A rangeland covered with sagebrush begs for an intensely hot fire that destroys not only habitat, but all kinds of wild and domestic animals.
But, Green Mail is the capital of the day. El Paso Corp kicks $20 million to Captain Marvel, and presto, there’s no threat of lawsuit or litigation from his court. Doesn’t have the first damned thing to do with saving habitat, or a sage hen. It has to do with money and political power, and that is all.
Back during the spotted owl controversy of the late eighties, many private timber companies were funneling greenmail checks to environmental groups, because all or most of their timber holdings were on deeded ground. So, when they helped lock up timber on public lands, it made their private timber stands that much more valuable.
In fact, during the ‘Redwood Summer’ of 1989, a timber broker out of San Mateo, California wrote the Earth First eco-terrorists a check for a million dollars to finance their ‘Redwood Summer’ protests, weed orgies, and sabotage attacks. That particular broker was selling timber from Texas and South America, so if he could help shut down the mills in the Pacific Northwest, he would fill the gap in the market and cash in millions more. That’s how Greenmail works.
It would no way come as a surprise if some curious journalist discovered that certain ranches grazing livestock on BLM and Forest Service land have been paying money to Marvel’s Group, to make sure they don’t get sued or have their permits cut.
Now you know what ‘Greenmail’ is; and very few of our highly lauded Congressmen or state legislators are motivated to do one flipping thing about it. They don’t even want to broach the subject. That’s because the Congress is chock full of lawyers, and the lawyers are milking the American people to the tune of trillions.
Today’s headline news is all about Benghazi and assorted other Obaminations, but you rarely hear any old radio or TV host talk about Greenmail, or how much America’s future relies upon the colossal amount of resource wealth being squandered on public lands out west.
In ASA, in ‘Designated Wilderness’ alone, there’s a land mass nearly four times the size of the nation called Iraq. Add in all the ‘Wilderness Study Areas’ which of course is de-facto wilderness, and you’re talking about a nearly incalculable mass of resource wealth.
Meanwhile, the lawyers are slurping up the eco-soup like drunken sailors at an oriental orgy. The cost of frivolous environmental lawsuits from a myriad of ecology groups runs into the billions every year, the government cuts these eco-groups checks to pay their attorney fees, and John Q taxpayer has always got to pick up the tab.
Marvel’s group gets fed from both ends. Not only do the taxpayers cover his attorney fees, but certain corporations (and likely some private companies) ship him pipelines filled with greenmail to keep him off their backsides. Three cheers for Kermit the Frog! Kermit is a hero of modern day environmental socialism, and the lawyers must love him dearly. We are subsidizing Sesame Street, and Kermit is a political powerhouse.
Will Rogers said: “Every time a lawyer writes something, he is not writing for posterity, he is writing so that endless others of his craft can make a living out of trying to figure out what he said. ‘Course, perhaps he hadn’t really said anything. That’s what makes it hard to explain.”
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