Tom Power on source of state gov’t budget difficulties across US

(A good one from University of Montana economist Tom Power, which appeared earlier in the week on MT Public Radio. – mk)

The latest political fad is to blame the budget difficulties at both the federal and state levels on government employees, in particular on their wages, benefits, and right to bargain collectively. There is something massively disorienting about this picture because it involves a distorted rewriting our recent economic history and the basic facts about government employment.

Federal, state, and local government budgets are under stress right now because of the financial collapse that triggered the Great Recession. As financial markets melted down and housing values plummeted, financial and construction workers were laid off wholesale, households stopped spending as much money and started saving so that they had some financial cushion if their family got caught up in the cascading layoffs. Faced with a drop in consumer spending and tight credit markets, businesses shelved expansion plans and did the opposite, laying off workers throughout the economy. Business profits tumbled, wage payments shrank, capital gains disappeared and were replaced with capital losses. The flow of tax revenues to federal, state, and local governments declined dramatically.

But governments still had to meet their usual obligations to put police on the streets, firefighters in fire stations, and teachers in schools. The federal government continued to face the cost of two wars and the world’s mightiest military force spread across the globe. Local governments still had to plow the snow and repair the roads.

In addition governments at all levels faced the increased costs associated with supporting the unemployed, coping with rising poverty, hunger, and homelessness and helping communities and families weather the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, 70 years ago.
It was those shrinking government tax revenues and stable or rising demand for government services that created the budget problems that plague governments at all levels.

It was not the wild spending of liberals or the wages and benefits of government workers who created the current budget problems. When the last Democratic president left office in 2000, the federal budget was running a surplus and most state government budgets were being balanced. It was not wild liberals who insisted on fighting two wars and expanding Medicare benefits while dramatically cutting taxes. It was a conservative Republican, George W. Bush. Instead of asking us to sacrifice to fund those wars and expanded benefits by paying higher taxes, he cut our taxes, started running massive deficits, and insisted that the most patriotic thing for citizens to do was to go shopping, assumedly using their credit cards.

Meanwhile, the deregulation fever spread and the economy lurched from one speculative bubble to another. We were all going to get rich, not by making more or better products, but by investing money in more and more risky financial gambles. The Las Vegas casino became our new economic model. The outcome was the near collapse of the nation’s and the world’s financial system and almost a repeat of the Great Depression. Instead, we “merely” got the Great Recession, the economic pain of which is likely to be with us for at least two more years.

It was not overpaid school teachers or police officers who brought this on us. It was outrageously overpaid financial speculators and corporate CEOs. Strangely enough, I do not hear Republican demagogues urging that the government take action against the real culprits behind the financial collapse and resulting Great Recession. The people who became hundred-millionaires in their high-stakes gambling with our livelihoods and homes go unmentioned. The fact that they are back at work wheeling and dealing and raking in their outrageous salaries, bonuses, and commissions is also ignored.

Instead the state budget deficits are blamed on underpaid school teachers and other civil servants. The fact is that the pay received by most state and local government workers, when adjusted for education, skill, and experience is notoriously lower that the pay in the private sector. Many local government workers actually qualify for food stamps.

It is true that politicians found it easier to make government jobs somewhat more attractive not by raising government workers’ salaries but by offering expanded medical and retirement benefits. Like many large corporations, those politicians also did not adequately fund the pension promises they made to their workers. Those promises did not have to be paid for until some distant point in time when the politicians and corporate CEOs would be long gone. As the failure of corporate pension plans across the nation over the last two decades has demonstrated, such financial irresponsibility has not been limited to the public sector.

The attack on teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and other civil servants as the cause of the various states’ budget problems is cheap scapegoating. Public employees did not cause the Great Recession that cutoff the flow of tax revenues to state government coffers. Very wealthy financial speculators did that. It is pure political demagoguery to use the fear and uncertainty generated by the current economic hard times to attack underpaid workers in order to pursue an unrelated political agenda, namely to renew the ongoing attack on workers’ rights to collectively bargain in their workplace.

There is no doubt that there is more economic pain to come and that government employees are going to have to share in it. Most have offered to do so. That is a fact of life during a serious economic downturn. But blaming the hard times and budget deficits on those whose pay and benefits you are cutting and topping that off by unilaterally taking away some of their civil rights, demoting them to second class citizens, is hardly a way of bringing citizens together to weather, as best we can, these very difficult times. When we need to be pulling together as a nation, state, and community, this partisan scapegoating is simply making bad times worse.

Western Lumber Industry had worst year on record, outlook even more dismal

This week the Western Wood Products Association reported that the Western lumber industry in 2009 posted its worst year for production in modern history, and that the outlook for this year is even more dismal.

Key Findings

• Overall, U.S. demand for lumber in 2009 was less than half of what was consumed in 2005.

• The amount of lumber used for residential construction is down 76% compared to 2005.

• The lack of home building in the U.S. contributed to the historic decline. Just 554,000 houses were built in 2009, a 39 percent decline from the previous year and a staggering 75% decline from 2005.

• Low demand translated into even lower prices for Western lumber products. The estimated wholesale value of the 2009 production was $2.69 billion, down 26 percent from 2008. Five years ago, Western mills produced 19.3 billion board feet of lumber valued at $7.7 billion.

• Since 2005, output from Western lumber mills has fallen by some 46 percent.

Given the fact that overall lumber demand in the U.S. is down 50% since 2005 and housing starts are down 75% since 2005 one really has to question the motivation and economic rationale of those who are calling for Congress to step in and mandate more public lands logging.

Related articles from this blog:

Time to Use a “Sustainability Filter”

Lumber Demand Drops 55%…So Some Call for More Public Lands Logging?

Talking Sustainable Forestry at the Mill

Black Liquor Scorecard: Pulp & Paper Companies Take $6.5 Billion from US Taxpayers in 2009

Smurfit-Stone Container Corp took home $654 million from US Taxpayers, while their net income was only $8 million in 2009

Over the past year I’ve written a few articles (here and here) about the US pulp and paper industry figuring out how to use an unintended tax loophole in the 2005 highway bill to basically transfer billions in US taxpayer funds right into their own packets.

Last May, the Washington Post provided extensive coverage of the black liquor boondoggle in an article that opened up with: “The Obama administration wants to stop billions of dollars of tax credits and direct payments to the paper industry under a tax provision originally intended to promote alternative fuels for motor vehicles.” The same article included this statement from a US Treasury Department official, “Right now this does appear to be a transfer from the taxpayers to this industry.”

Talk about a “redistribution of wealth!” Where are the tea-baggers complaining about “socialism” when you need them, eh?

Sadly, for the most part, this multi-billion dollar transfer of taxpayer funds to the pulp and paper industry hasn’t gotten nearly the coverage it deserves by the mainstream press. That in itself is just really strange, especially since the US Government appears to be handing out taxpayer dollars like candy at Halloween and Americans of all political stripes are fed up and rightfully worried about our future.

Perhaps the mainstream newspapers in this country are a little gun shy about giving the pulp and paper industry a black eye.  For example, here in Missoula, Montana the local daily paper – the Missoulian – over the past year has completely failed (unless I missed it somewhere) to let their readers know that the Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation (while in bankruptcy and closing mills in Montana, Michigan and elsewhere) collected over half a billion dollars from US taxpayers in 2009. To make matters more interesting, Smurfit’s net income for 2009 was only $8 million.  Seriously, is this not a “newsworthy” item?

The fine folks at the Dead Tree Edition blog have put together more detailed information about the black liquor tax credit, which includes a detailed scorecard showing which pulp and paper corporations profitted the most on the backs of US taxpayers. That blog post is pasted below or available here. – mk
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The $6.5 billion in controversial black-liquor credits earned in 2009 by 21 publicly traded pulp and paper companies was far more than their total profit for the year.

Despite the government’s unintended largesse, the 21 companies had combined net income of about $3 billion, according to an exclusive Dead Tree Edition analysis of documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Without the U.S. government subsidy, only nine of the companies would have been profitable in 2009, In fact, three recipients – Weyerhaeuser, NewPage, and Sappi – together lost $1.1 billion last year despite receiving nearly $800 million from the black-liquor program that expired on Dec. 31. AbitibiBowater, the one recipient that has not reported earnings for the 4th Quarter, almost certainly lost hundreds of millions as well.

At least one-fourth of the country’s capacity to make kraft pulp is in the hands of privately held companies that don’t have to file with the SEC. Assuming they took advantage of the “alternative fuel mixture” program in the same way that their publicly held peers did, the federal government probably shelled out between $8 and $9 billion to pay to do what they would have done anyway – use black liquor, a pulp byproduct, as a fuel source for their pulp operations.

Several of the public companies’ reports state that they expect to receive no subsidies for black liquor this year. And they’re right.

But don’t tell that to Congress or the news media. Obama Joins in on the Black Liquor Two-Step documented how sloppy reporting by leading news organizations had allowed Democratic Congress members to claim they were saving money by excluding black liquor from the new Cellulosic Biofuel Producer Credits (CBPC) — a program that black liquor couldn’t qualify for anyway.

In the 12 days since that was published, the black-liquor silliness in Washington has gotten even worse, with Republicans joining the shell game. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) tried to play taxpayer hero this week by proposing to “pay” for a new jobs program by closing the non-existent CBPC loophole. But Democrats blocked that effort because they have already committed to using the bogus savings for healthcare reform.

Bunning’s effort to exclude black liquor from CBPC “is absolutely meritorious and should be adopted whatever else Congress does,” The Washington Post opined in a fact-challenged editorial. “This particular piece of corporate welfare showers paper companies with about $2.5 billion per year . . . that encourages them to generate power with ‘black liquor,’ an ‘alternative fuel.’” Nope. Not a dime has been paid to pulp and paper companies under CBPC.

Here are the 21 publicly traded companies, listed according to the amount of credits they received. The first number is the amount of black-liquor credits reported, the second is 2009 net income:

International Paper: $2.06 billion in black liquor credits; $2.36 billion net income
Smurfit-Stone Container: $654 million; $8 million
Domtar: $498 million; $310 million
MeadWestvaco: $375 million; $225 million
Weyerhaeuser: $344 million; $ – 545 million
NewPage: $304 million; $ – 308 million
AbitibiBowater: $284 million (estimated); $ – 801 million through 3rd Quarter
Verso Paper: $239 million; $106 million
Temple-Inland: $218 million; $206 million
Boise: $208 million; $154 million
Rayonier: $205 million; $313 million
Kapstone Paper and Packaging: $178 million; $80 million
Packaging Corporation of America: $176 million; $266 million
Clearwater Paper: $171 million; $182 million
Graphic Packaging: $147 million; $56 million
SAPPI: $136 million; $ -251 million
Buckeye Technologies: $130 million; $154 million
P.H. Glatfelter: $108 million; $123 million
Rock-Tenn: $75 million; $279 million
Appleton Papers: $18 million; $25 million
Wausau: $14 million; $21 million

Put Bluntly and Country, Tester’s Logging Bill is a Dog that Won’t Hunt

Note: The following guest column appeared today in the Great Falls Tribune.

It’s written by Paul Edwards, a former Montana Wilderness Association board member who ended up resigning from MWA’s Board shortly after the Beaverhead Partnership was announced in spring of 2006. Amazingly, even though Edwards was the chair of MWA’s Wilderness Committee, he and other Board members were kept completely in the dark about MWA’s secret, closed-door negotiations with the timber industry, the results of which now makes up the bulk of Tester’s Logging Bill.

It’s also interesting to note that if Edwards supported the Tester Logging Bill, he would be hailed by the Beaverhead Partnership and supporters of Tester’s Logging Bill as a “non-traditional ally” because of his remarkably diverse background.

You see, Edwards worked as a young man as a pea-pitcher, header-puncher, roustabout, wild animal trainer’s assistant, high-steel man, able seaman, movie actor, and NGO rep in I Corps, during the Vietnam War. Edwards also put in 25 years as a writer, director and producer in Hollywood film and television (including serving as a writer for the hit TV show Gunsmoke) before fleeing for his life and what remained of his sanity to his ranch on the Rocky Mountain Front at the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

However, since Edwards is willing to stand up for Wilderness, public lands, sane economic policy and open and transparent public processes, he’s more likely to be labeled an extremist by supporters of Tester’s Logging Bill. Go figure…

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Tester Forest Jobs, Recreation Act is a dog that won’t hunt
By PAUL EDWARDS

Well, finally … Sen. Tester and a few strange bedfellows have floated a logging bill that everyone who works, has worked, or hopes to work, for one of four struggling lumber mills or one bankrupt cardboard box maker can wholeheartedly endorse.

Letters to the papers from such folks, including owners and employees of the mills and their “environmental partners,” express boundless joy we’ve all agreed to this federal welfare proposal to bail them out before they perish by the Invisible Hand of the Market.

You know, The Hand that regulates commerce in our American Free Market system and separates businesses that can compete from those can’t and will fail. That’s private enterprise: Some got to win, some got to lose. Tough noogies – the Hand has no pity.

But our big-hearted feds do. Because even though the Greenspans, Bernankes and Geithners who manipulate our money are sworn hardcore believers in free market capitalism, they think some outfits – doggone it – are … well, to big to fail.

Evidently, Tester feels the same about these mills. It’s not that they’re too big, though; it’s that they’re too important to Montana, so he has to bail ‘em out with our money. Like the feds did AIG and Goldman Sachs, B of A and Chase, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s the new thing in Free Market Economics: The Invisible Hand’s been replaced by The Visible Handout. That’s what Tester’s Logging Welfare Bill is all about.

What makes these mills so important? Will a bailout create thousands of jobs, pump millions into our economy?

Well, no, its effect would be negligible even in boom times and lumber demand is down 55 percent with prices at modern historic lows. So what, then? Why is Tester pushing this deal?

It’s symbolism. There’s this weird perception rooted deep in our mythology that because extractive industries like mining and logging were once drivers of our economy that they still are; or ought to be; or will be again. The reality is that they can’t hack it in the world market even with the huge subsidies the U. S. industrial welfare program hands them.

But let’s say it was worth giving them a fat pork-barrel deal. What will it look like?

At an estimated taxpayer hit of $100 million from Forest Service losses on these below-cost sales, they get a mandated cut of 100,000 acres over 10 years: 30K in the brutally overcut Yaak and a staggering70K in the bone-dry Beaverhead/Deer Lodge where the Forest Service never allowed more than 2,800 acres cut, even in boom lumbering years.

In addition, more than 1 million acres of inventoried roadless wildland, including most of several of Lee Metcalf’s Wilderness Study Areas, will lose their protection and be opened to “management.”

And what’s the payoff for us Americans who own the forests for keeping these icons of yesteryear on life support? 600,000 acres of rocks and ice wilderness in scattered, widely separated patches with no connectivity, including one tiny island in the hammered Yaak.

For outdoor folks, hunters, anglers, horsemen and seekers after peace and solitude, any wilderness is good wilderness, and after decades without any preservation of Montana wildlands – as fine and whole as any left anywhere – the yearning for it that all of us feel who love and use the outdoors without smog-machines is tremendous.

That said, this bill is a visionless, wholly inadequate wildlands proposal – a fact made obvious by the absence of the word wilderness in its title – that simply gives away far too much to protect far too little. It shows very clearly how little regard Tester and Max Come-Lately have for our irreplaceable wilderness, in spite of phony chin music.

This plan – secretly concocted by its “partners” – is not only a terrible wilderness bill (which it unquestionably is) it’s also a terrible logging bill for everyone but the little mill owners. Since they don’t represent 1 percent of Montana’s working people, you have to wonder how such a sorry, deformed, ugly hash could ever have been sold to Tester.

It will be interesting to watch it in Congress. Word is the “partners” think they have the skids greased. Maybe so, but they may find that in the big federal meat grinder this particular batch of raw pork will be judged too gamy to make acceptable sausage.

Over half a century ago the wise and visionary Aldo Leopold, speaking of a public Land Ethic, said, “A thing is right when it preserves the integrity, beauty and stability of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise.” No one has ever said it better.

There is just no way to craft a national welfare bill for a few small, desperate lumber mills at the price of so much irreplaceable wild country and sell it to Congress as a grand boon to Montana and America. To put it bluntly and country, Tester’s dog won’t hunt.

Lumber Demand Drops 55%…So Some Call for More Public Lands Logging?

A few days ago, the Missoulian ran an article titled, “Battered and Boarded: Recession rattles timber industry to its core.”

Here are some quick snips from that article:

“The Western Wood Products Association estimates that 45 percent of all lumber goes to new home construction. But new home starts have been more than halved since reaching a high of more than 2 million in 2005. Since that year, the nation’s demand for lumber has dropped 55 percent, the steepest decline in industry history.”

“National demand for lumber, which pegged 64.3 billion board feet in 2005, is predicted to fall below 30 billion board feet this year, with the amount of lumber used to build new homes dropping from 28 billion board feet to about 5 billion board feet. Making matters worse is the fact that log prices have not fallen at the same rate, meaning mills are paying more for raw materials while selling product for less.”

It’s interesting to note that all the economic reality contained in this article has been systematically ignored by Senator Jon Tester, his staff and those three or four conservation groups who actually support Tester’s Mandated Logging Bill. For more info on Tester’s Logging Bill, check out these links here,  here,  here and here.

Just imagine, after decades and decades of over-consumption and over-development (which have caused a host of environmental and social problems in our country) we’ve come to a point in the public lands forest/wilderness movement where groups such as Montana Wilderness Association, National Wildlife Federation and Montana Trout Unlimited are actually looking to use their political connections to mandate more logging on public lands, despite the steepest decline in demand for lumber in our nation’s history.

With demand for lumber, excess packaging and disposable paper products (thankfully) in such a steep decline (and not expected to rebound anytime soon) wouldn’t sensible conservationists and progressives, if anything, advocate for less public lands logging at this very important point in our nation’s history?

Did We Pay $302 Million Extra for Plum Creek’s Cut-Over Lands?

An article today in Barron’s contains a bunch of great information regarding the fact that “US timberlands may be one of the world’s most overvalued asset classes.”

Here are some snips from the article:

“Compared with the outlook for key commodities such as oil, copper or aluminum, the outlook for most forest products isn’t strong. Demand could weaken as the world goes digital and uses less paper.”

“Timber is one of those overhyped investments whose supposed virtues don’t hold up well under closer scrutiny. It is hard to find an asset that has appreciated so much, even as the products created from it are so weak. This doesn’t bode well for private holders of timber and investors in timber REITs. For those seeking commodity investments and inflation hedges, look elsewhere.”

The article also include a specific, in-depth look at Plum Creek Timber Company.

According to the article: “In outlining the bear case for Plum Creek in the Midyear Roundtable, Schafer noted it was valued at about 30 times estimated 2010 earnings and nearly 20 times projected pre-tax cash flow. Plum Creek’s seven million acres of timberland are now valued at more than $1,100 an acre. He said $600 an acre is a more realistic value.”

If this $600 per acre estimate is the correct/realistic value of Plum Creek’s timberlands, it’s worth noting that 312,000 acres of mostly cut-over Plum Creek Timber Company lands were purchased as part of the Montana Legacy Project for $490 million (including $250 million which came directly from the federal government…ie US taxpayers).

That translates to $1,570 per acre.  This could mean that US taxpayers and the Montana Legacy Project partners paid Plum Creek Timber Company $302,640,000.00 over and above what their timberlands were really worth.

More on Pulp Industry’s Billion Dollar Taxpayer Boondoggle

Last month I wrote about how the US pulp and paper industry has figured out how to use an unintended tax loophole in the 2005 highway bill to basically transfer up to $10 billion in taxpayer funds right into their own packets.  Essentially every man, woman and child in the US is being forced to give $30 to the industrial dinosaurs in the pulp and paper industry.

Well, today I stumbled across some more information about this boondoggle courtesy of a new report in the  North American Wood Fiber Review.

According to the report:

In 2008, US pulp companies started to take advantage of a loophole in the US tax law, which will result in an influx of billions of [US taxpayer] dollars to a struggling industry. The tax credit was originally introduced in 2005 to encourage the use of alternative fuel over fossil fuel for cars and trucks. However, since late 2008, chemical pulp producing mills started to take advantage of the credit….These additional [US taxpayer] funds to the US pulp and paper industry, which is estimated to be valued between $3 billion to $8 billion dollars total in 2009, has been particularly helpful this year because many mills have been running with very low, if any, profit margins.

Wait, isn’t that “socialism?” But hold on, there’s more!

Without a doubt, many paper companies would have reduced their production of pulp this year had it not been for the black liquor tax credit….It is still uncertain how much longer the tax credit, or subsidy, will be in place. The US administration and a number of senators would like to see the program ended as soon as possible. Therefore, it may very well be that from October 1st 2009, US pulpmills will have to run without the support of the US taxpayers.

Oh great! So you mean that the pulp and paper industry would have actually had to reduce the amount of pulp and paper they produced without US Taxpayers giving the pulp and paper industry $8 billion in tax credits! So taxpayers not only get to foot this $8 billion bill, but we also get stuck with all these unneeded, wasteful paper and packaging products? Is this about the furthest thing from enlightened environmental policy you’ve ever heard of?

Please contact Senator Max Baucus and ask him to end this tax loophole as soon as possible. You can email Senator Baucus via his website or call his DC office directly at: (202) 224-2651.

Meet the New Montana Woodproducts Association

By all accounts, once all is said and done, the current 2009 Montana Legislative Session will go down as one of the worst sessions for the environment in recent Montana history. Of course, this is somewhat ironic given that environmental consciousness has increased significantly in both our state and country over the past decade.

Some might say, “But wait. Didn’t I see recently in Grist that your Governor Brian Schweitzer was one of the greenest govs in the entire land?” Well, check out the comments section at that post and then get back with me.

Fact is, those of us in Montana who are familiar with the rhetoric and policies coming out of the Schweitzer Administration, like the dedicated folks at Helena’s Montana Environmental Information Center, see right through the governor’s BS.  Make no mistake, unless Gov Schweitzer is warming up his veto pen, he’ll sign into law legislation that would make even Marc Racicot and Judy Martz proud.

Now I admit to historically not paying much attention to what’s happening in Helena during our biannual legislative sessions. Over the years, my environmental work has revolved more around federal policies coming out of Washington DC.  This year, out of necessity, has been a little different, although I still wish I could spend more time in Helena.

Last October, as it became quite clear that the timber industry and their supporters in the state house were greasing the wheels for a host of bills to “bail out” the timber industry, I pen an oped for the Missoulian titled Recent turmoil shows a new economic model needed.  If I do say so myself, it pretty much hits the nail on the head and I’d encourage folks to go back and give it a read, especially in light of dramatic changes our economy and world have gone through over the past six months.

I opened the piece with:

“Over the years, there have been plenty of proverbial canaries in the coal mine who repeatedly warned about a looming economic crisis, a virtual perfect storm that would be equal parts over-consumption, unsustainable development, deregulation, “free trade” and irresponsibility on the part of corporations and consumers. If the sobering economic headlines of the past few weeks teach us one thing it should be that much of our current economic system is significantly flawed and that a new economic model – based on the principles of sustainability and local and regional self-sufficiency – is desperately needed.”

I then provided numerous examples documenting how the timber industry finds itself smack in the middle of the worst housing slump since the Great Depression and the steepest decline in lumber consumption ever.  I quoted timber mill managers that bluntly stated “Market prices are depressed and don’t currently cover the costs of production” and “No one’s buying what [we have] to sell. We’re getting to the point where we’re not getting any offers [for our products].”

But then I got to the meat of the issue, that there was “an aggressive effort behind the scenes to ‘bail out’ the timber industry with an ill-conceived initiative divorced from economic reality and any concept of sustainability.”  Let’s see. There were calls for tripling logging on national forests. Doubling logging on state lands. A bizarre plan for the state to seize control of a million acres of national forests. Then there were the bills to exempt the timber industry from paying fuel taxes, discounts for vehicle registration and even a bill to give the entire timber industry a two-year tax holiday.

As I pointed out back in October, “If we are going to ‘bail out’ the timber industry, shouldn’t Montanans at least demand that any taxpayer dollars go towards efforts that truly put the industry on a path towards economic and ecological sustainability?”  Is this really too much to ask for? I mean, at this point in human history would anyone who considers themselves an environmentalists actually stand up and fight for more of the same? For dumping more taxpayer dollars into an over-consumption/over-development paradigm? As they say in my native Wisconsin, “Oh, You Betcha!”

Enter MWA, the new Montana Woodproducts Association.  Some people still think MWA stands for Montana Wilderness Association, but if anyone’s been closely following the wilderness controversy in Montana (here, here and here) they’d see why the new name fits their acronym quite well.

You see, despite having an office a few blocks from Montana’s capital, by most accounts MWA has been completely AWOL on any bills in Helena having to do with the timber industry. Yep, ole MWA has largely hitched their Wilderness Wagon to the ole Timber Train and look what a mess they’ve created for themselves.

Oh, no, MWA can’t speak out against the timber industry or misguided public policy! MWA can’t even be honest with the public and tell them that there is simply no demand for wood products and that the existing timber mill infrastructure in Montana is largely a hold-over from the completely unsustainable logging and roadbuilding paradigm of recent past. Nope.

If the logging lobbyists storm the capital demanding that they be allowed to openly violate the US Constitution and just declare national forest lands “decayed” so counties can march onto federal land and just start logging, MWA can’t speak out against that. Nope, don’t want to offend their behind the scences collaboration with the timber industry.  Good thing I happened to show up as the only person to speak out against the bill and managed to kill it in the house committee (even though it passed the Senate 42-7).

Well, perhaps I should be more fair. It’s not really like MWA has been completely AWOL this legislative session. You see, if the timber industry needs a $10 million loan from Montana taxpayers to cover payroll and buy more logs (even though there’s virtual no demand for lumber and they can’t even sell timber), well, You Betchta!  MWA will make the trip up to the capital, as their executive director did last week, to support a taxpayer loan to “save the timber industry infrastructure.” Yep, what the world really needs now is more taxpayer funded over-consumption and over-development!

As I pointed out in a previous post last week, truth be told, the Montana timber industry actually requested a minimum taxpayer financed loan of $65 million. Think about it folks, if the Montana timber industry needs, at a minimum, a $65 million loan from taxpayers to cover payroll and buy logs it can’t sell maybe the industry wasn’t very sustainable to begin with.  Or maybe their business plans were flawed.

And it’s not like I don’t support using some stimulus money to help the timber industry right itself. As I said in October and pasted above, I just believe that any taxpayer funds need to be put towards efforts that truly put the industry on a more sustainable path. We cannot just hand over taxpayer dollars so the timber industry can pump out more lumber to build 5000 square foot homes in sprawling subdivisions and call it good. Those days have passed and our economy is in tatters as a result.

As I highlighted in a previous post, too bad a guy like Greg, with a good idea and a passion for bona-fide Sustainable Forestry, couldn’t get $21,000 for his portable sawmill and get a small crew together.  I’d rather see 475 outfits like Greg out there than see $10 million dumped into a black hole.

The future must be clean, green and sustainable. There is no other option. The sooner the public, elected officials and environmental organizations such as the Montana Wilderness Association, come to terms with this fact the better off we will all be in the future.

Time to Use a “Sustainability Filter”

Last fall, as the full extent of the global economic crisis was coming into focus, and it was clear that US taxpayers would be asked to foot the bill for various “stimulus” and “bailout” packages, I started talking up the idea of “sustainability filter.”

One thing that got me thinking about the need for a sustainability filter was the multi-billion dollar bailout (er “loan”) that taxpayers were forced to give the Big Three US automakers. I mean, forking over precious taxpayer funds to produce more crappy gas hogs that nobody wants really isn’t a sensible (or sustainable) solution for anyone, except perhaps a few auto and oil executives.

And what about the billions upon billions of taxpayer money we’re spending on “shovel ready” infrastructure projects? Sure some of these projects are decent and forward thinking, but the vast majority of these “shovel ready” projects just place the preverbal band-aide on the head wound, which is our crumbling, inefficient, resource intensive1950s-era infrastructure. At what point do we seriously start investing taxpayer dollars only in the type of sustainable energy, transportation or food infrastructure our country needs for 2050 and beyond?

This is where the sustainability filter comes in. Even if a rather coarse filter was used, just imagine how many billions of public, taxpayer dollars could be diverted from misguided projects and endeavors? Sure if a company wants to continue down the path of over-consumption and dirty energy, I guess it’s their right to explore that dead end. But my point is that as taxpayers we have a right to no longer subsidize their research and development or improve their bottom line at the expense of our future.

Despite what some pundits say, I believe that people are hungry for this type of approach for a better tomorrow. Remember during the presidential debates how some networks had a “live debate meter,” which tracked reactions from a diverse group of undecided voters? Well, far as I could tell, the only time the meter was “off the charts” positive was when the candidates were talking about clean energy and a green economy.

Now, I fully admit that I don’t have this sustainability filter totally fleshed out and I plan on exploring the concept further. So I’m totally open to suggestions, comments and additional information. The past few weeks I’ve been researching the issue and it’s been somewhat surprising how little information is out there about the concept.

Back in the late 90s, many forest activists worked with something called the Green Scissors Campaign on specific efforts to end harmful and wasteful taxpayer subsidies found in the Forest Service’s timber sale and roadbuilding budgets. But as far as I can tell, the Green Scissors Campaign ceased any activity a few years ago. If someone knows different, please let me know.

Let’s also hope that Van Jones, the White House’s new Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, has some real pull with the Obama Administration, as he clearly understands these issues as well as anyone.