Wilsons Sandbox

Again the simplest way to solve this probelm is to vote the liar-in-chief and his pupil Al Gore (no controlling legal authority and father of the internet) out of office. George Bush has already stated that he will leave all land issues to be settled at the state level. Russel'r -> Bill Clinton may not be the worst President, but he is the worst person who was ever President *** BLUERIBBON ALERT *** BLUERIBBON ALERT *** BLUERIBBON ALERT *** Dear Subscriber: We may have lost another one with the designation of a Sequoia national monument (scheduled for April 15) but there are at least a couple of things we can do to try to stop Clinton from creating any more! Two of these can be found on the Web site, www.monumentpetition.com. Signing the tough petition on that site is a good way to lodge a protest. E mailing Clinton to urge him to meet with members of the Western Caucus of the House of Representatives is even more effective. They want to try to get him to abide by the provisions of a bill which overwhelmingly passed the House which would require more public involvement and at least a 60 day consultation period with affected elected officials before Clinton designates any new monuments. Included below is an excerpt from an analysis of the monument problem by the Western Counties' Institute which explains the value of the e-mail campaign in more detail. Pass this on to anyone else you think would help! (Excerpt from Western Counties' analysis) The www.MonumentPetition.com Approach This Web site offers a unique and potentially very effective approach to trying to prevent future monument designations. It provides an easy way to send a prepared (but personalizable) e-mail to Clinton urging him to agree to meet with the Western Caucus of the House of Representatives. They have requested a meeting before he creates any new national monuments so they can discuss with him implementing the provisions of H.R. 1487, legislation which overwhelmingly passed the House last September by a vote of 408-2. Among other things, this bill provides for public input during the consideration of a proposed national monument. It also establishes a consultation period of at least 60 days with affected elected officials before a president designates a monument. Implementing these provisions would be useful. Even more useful would be the education of Bill Clinton which would take place at such a meeting. Clinton clearly does not understand even the basics of public land law and regulations (a major reason he cited for designating the recent Arizona monuments was to protect them from "sprawl!"), but without doubt he would have a much better understanding of these fundamentals after meeting with the Caucus. As a result, he could be held more specifically accountable for his motivations and the unsupportable statements he will no doubt try to make in future monument proclamations. The key to the potential usefulness of this approach is that the e-mails to Clinton are routed through this single site. This will give an accurate count of how many e-mails he receives, something impossible to get any other way. That number can be helpful in several ways, including reporting it to the media and providing the Western Caucus with further leverage to try to force him to meet with them. At the very least, if he creates additional monuments without meeting with them despite strong grass roots pressure to do so, he has an increasing public relations problem. As already discussed, it appears the only practical way to prevent future monuments is to make designating them less politically attractive to Clinton and Gore. If the reporting of the designation of additional monuments includes such negative messages (from Clinton's perspective) as his refusal to meet with concerned members of the House or to follow the procedures overwhelmingly adopted by that body, the political attractiveness of the "designation event" will be diminished. When these elements are combined with such things as charges that he is greatly exceeding his authority to reserve land under the smallest-area-compatible test in the Act, those negatives increase dramatically--especially for a president whom most Americans already believe has little respect for the law. This site also posts a quite blunt and toughly-worded national petition against future monument designations. It is certainly useful to support petitions like these, but they will only be helpful in heading off future monuments if they are signed by a large number of people. *** END ALERT *** END ALERT *** END ALERT *** END ALERT ***