The McCain of Vermont (Short Interview w/Dean)

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Arizona Republic reporter Chip Scutari chatted with Dean this week as he campaigned in Iowa.

QUESTION: What do you think of Protect Arizona Now, the proposed initiative that would require state and local government workers to check the immigration status of everyone seeking public services?

ANSWER: I totally oppose that. I think it's anti-Latino. I'm against that kind of stuff. We need to be sure the federal government is paying its fair share for health care, education and security. We also have to keep in mind that some of these vigilante groups aren't the best way to enforce immigration laws.

Q: Forest fires are a huge issue for Arizona. What is your stance on forest thinning as a measure to prevent catastrophic forest fires?

A: My stance is that George Bush does what he always does. He talks a big game and does absolutely nothing. His Healthy Forest Initiative is pushed as an excuse to open the wilderness areas to logging, and it never did deliver on its original promise. We should get rid of this president and his pandering to big timber.

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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0817deanQampA17.html

that Dean tells it like he feels, not wondering if the polls will agree with him. His appeal to the grassroots and his basic honesty have made him a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

Howard Dean is... Howard Dean. The personal comparisons don't really go very far.

I know he probably didn't have much time to answer. But I hope one of the candidates will bring up an issue that is not talked about enough. And that's adequate funding for the Forest Service's wildfire budget.

Last year, the Forest Service spent $1.4 billion protecting all of us, and our lands and resources, from wildfire. (To put the expense in perspective, that's about half what we're spending every day to occupy Iraq; you tell us which threat seems greatest at the moment.) Congress budgeted a little more than $400 million for fighting fires last year, and less than $700 million this year. President Bush, who's done so much talking lately about the dangers of wildfire, asked for less than $300 million.
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2003/08/17/opinion/opinion6.txt

I think this is a winning issue for the Democrats. And, I guess it's especially important to me right now considering that there is a 2643 acre wildfire burning within 6 miles of my house and I'm under an evacuation warning.

I read the Missoulian this morning and just wanted to cry. I lived in that area for about 10 years and every single place we ever went for our Sunday picnics and fishing and rafting is all burning up. Hwy 12 closed for 100 miles??? Gads, it's just the saddest thing. I write to my Congressman, Pete Defazio, about the forests all the time, he's worked hard on this for a long time.

And note Dean says 30 inch trees. Either it's old growth or it's not. Not to mention he doesn't even talk about logging jobs. There somehow has to be a solution that protects the old growth, cleans the forests, protects the communities and does it in a way that creates some sort of sustainable logging economy. A gun isn't going to get a vote if nobody can afford to buy the gun in the first place.

so hopefully that helped a bit. I'm near Alberton. But there's fires all around western Montana.

A sustainable logging economy? I don't know. We all know that timber is a renewable resource but it renews at an awfully slow rate. And the price of timber is so low due to imports, logging and milling isn't profitable on a small scale.

It's similar to the way low gas prices promote the absolute worst tendencies in our civilization. Considering that petroleum is a non-renewable resource, it doesn't seem to be priced accordingly - no one really understands how we are going to make the transition as a species to a world without fossil fuels, so many facets of our civilization rely on them, so we should be doing all we can to delay the day they are all gone. (On a side note, this is one of my arguments against drilling in ANWR. The proponents say we need the oil, and we have more environmentally friendly drilling techniques now. My answer is, if we need the oil now, think how much more we will need it in 100, 200, 500 or a thousand years. And how more advanced our techniques will be then.)

If truly sound and sustainable forestry where practiced everywhere in the world, wood products would be a lot more expensive. But we would be paying closer to what it is really worth. That's where I think we ultimately need to end up.

That's the real bottom line and real problem with globalization actually. The US consumes whatever ridiculous percentage of the world's resources. We promote an economic scheme where the whole world is going to consume like we do. Well hells bells, there isn't enough resources for that, anybody do the math? But that isn't going to go over so well at this point because the capitalists wouldn't know what to do if Americans stopped consuming.

With logging, I'd just like to see the old growth locked up and then a strict select logging scheme put into place. They aren't letting most forests grow for very many years here in Oregon, they take them when they're pretty small and chip them, into chipboard I guess. So that's a bit more 'sustainable' economically, but not regrowing our forests which I think alot of people believe is happening. We need a promotion for alternative building sources too. I read somewhere that American forests only produce enough to make the wood pallets we use every year. That's sad. Destroying an irreplacable environment to make pallets. There's got to be a better solution than that.

So you're in Alberton huh? Is that cool old bookstore still there? I love that place, one of the best bookstores I've ever been in. I lived mostly in Stevensville and there was a little creek we used to go to after work or on Saturdays and it's on fire. Skalkaho Falls I guess too. The Rattlesnake, Blue Mountain. Mind boggling really. It's got to be frightening for you. From someone who lost her home in a fire, my opinion... It's not the pictures unless you know they're the only ones. It's the little momentos you've collected that you'll miss. It's getting into a new home and looking around and there's nothing that you recognize. So if you're boxing up things, that's the stuff to take.

I'll keep you in my prayers, if that's the sort of thing you care for.