Utah's U.S. congressional delegation is hopping on the Green River Oil Shale bandwagon. Chris Cannon (R) has been pushing for the removal of red-tape from the BLM Oil and Gas Lease program, while Orrin Hatch (R) has gone on record in support of the President's 4-pronged domestic oil-drilling proposal.

Critics of the oil shale proposal need to update their arguments -- and they must do so quickly.

Earlier this month, a three-judge panel upheld a decision awarding $18 million to the Halper family, former owners of a farm in Piscataway, New Jersey, which was taken by the Township through eminent domain.  The Halpers had argued that they were entitled to the market value of the property when they had exhausted their legal options in 2004 while the Township sought to pay the family $4.3 million, the value of the property when the condemnation complaint was filed in 1999.  The Court found that the Halpers were entitled to the market value of the property in 2004, holding that the legal actions undertaken by the family should not be used against them when determining the appropriate market value of the property.

Following recent investigative articles by the New York Times and the Washington Post  which detail two separate instances in which Sen. McCain apparently used his influence to bring about federal land deals lucrative for his friends and campaign contributors, another such case is about to come to the forefront.

This new land swindle is far less benign than the other two.  It involves wealthy corporate mining interests, electric utilities, and a Coal slurry pipeline through the homeland of Native Americans, which took not only their land but their precious water along the way as well.

In this case, Sen. McCain's influence did more than just bring profits to campagin contributors, it dispossessed thousands of indigenous people from lands they had occupied since before Columbus, not in the 19th Century, but in the 21st.  A story similar to that of many tribes sold out and taken advantage of by ruthless politicians, this wasnt the work of some banana republic dictator, but of the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

In honor of Black History Month I post a few Black History diaries, every year.

Everyone knows Pres. Lincoln was a Republican. The GOP was the party most abolitionist called home, and after the Civil war most Blacks were Republicans.  But most people are unfamiliar with just how influencial Black Republicans were in the post civil war era.  In this, the period before the Great Migration of Blacks out of the South, Blacks composed a majority of the population of Mississippi, and over 40% of the population of 4 other Southern States. In fact the two US Senators from Mississippi were African-American! Even if the in rest of the South, where Blacks weren't numerous enough to project political power, had fell into the grasp of segregationist forming  the solid south, why did the GOP write off these 5 States? Why write off 10 Senators, and numerous Electoral College votes? Racism? Well undoubtedly that played a part, but not as much as many of you have been lead to think! "Big Money" was worried about two things, property rights, and land reform; concerns over these "rights" were strong enough for the GOP to abandon the Black Southern GOP. Doubtful? Let's go on a historical journey...

Please check out my site Oregon Watch for all your Measure 49 needs.

An editorial in the Medford Mail-Tribune caught my eye this weekend. The full editorial can be found here.

In this editorial the Mail-Tribune points out some very interesting facts and brings to light some things that I had not seen previously discussed as of yet in everything about Measure 49 and Measure 37. Starting off with some common misconceptions floating out there about Measure 49, and ending with putting the debate into a perspective that I had not seen before.

Join me below the fold for more about this article...

You're not going to believe this.  Well, maybe you will.

A year ago, I diaried (and also here) about the Bush administration's attempt to sell over 800,000 acres to pay for schools.  Thankfully, with bipartisan opposition, this crazy attempt was foiled.

But, now, it's back:

The Bush administration again proposed selling off hundreds of thousands of acres of forestland to help continue a program that is vital to Oregon county and school budgets.

In his budget released Monday, President Bush proposed raising as much as $800 million by selling nearly 275,000 acres of Forest Service land deemed "isolated or inefficient to manage."

I am trying to help spread the word on the latest actions of our government.

I read this article and it outraged me so.  Why is our government taking such valuable land and why do they need so much more-especially after announcing the closures of so many already EXISTING bases?

Many critics of statist privilege have pointed to the "land monopoly" as the primary government intervention that channels wealth from the poor to the rich; however, discussion of the land issue is conspicuously absent from Dean Baker's excellent critique of statist privilege, The Conservative Nanny State.

Baker repeatedly brought up probelms that can be adressed by land value taxation, and even indirectly described how land value taxation solves one of those problems, but never directly addressed the issue.

It has been almost two weeks since the election that placed me on the county board.  The most surprising thing to happen so far has been the arranging to figure out who will be on what committees.  This was something totally unexpected on my part.  There are 17 county board supervisors and 6 committees elected by the board members.  The big no surprise here is that the group that controls a majority of the seats controls who can get on the committees.  I am hopeful that I will be elected to the Health and Human services and the Law Enforcement committee.  But even if I am elected to these It will still be important to get a majority on the Finance and Personnel committee because all budgets go through there before going to the whole board.

Background: In an obscene attempt to privatize our public lands, the Bush administration proposes to auction to the highest bidder "isolated" forestland to pay for rural schools. Hundreds of thousands of acres will be chopped out of Bitterroot National Forest, the Columbia Gorge, and many other national treasures. If this scheme is allowed to proceed, year after year, we can expect our public lands to be sold to make up for the Bush-created national deficit.

You can now use the complicated tool to view precisely what lands Bush wants to sell. It's difficult to use, so I have done some of the legwork.

In the following maps, the areas bordered by green are slated for sale by the Federal Government. These few maps are only a fraction of the 800,000 acres proposed for sale nationwide, and only a fraction even within Oregon.