HCN – In the South, where I grew up, it was called carpetbagging — looting a war-torn land for personal profit. In the West, the despoilers were called robber barons. It’s an American tradition, but always before, there were some checks and balances. Which ones exist now?
One white male banker hand-puppet after another is being offered a Cabinet position, and while much of the nation’s sound and fury gets aroused by matters such as the collapse of the Mexican economy and nuclear war with Russia and all those other pesky annoyances that were somehow not a problem in the previous administration, we here in the West are fighting mad over yet another blow to the Republic — the Trump administration’s proposal to transfer our public lands to private individuals.
States such as Montana, rich in the natural resources that are our state’s economic driver, are a low-hanging plum for warmongers. We have only a million people here to defend the homeland against carpetbaggers, safeguarding the public treasury of our national parks and forests — though defend it we will.
News flash, and not-so-coincidental shocker: The Carlyle Group, the consortium of Bush and Cheney-era former legislators turned lobbyists and investors, owns federal leases on the majority of coal underlying Western public lands.
