Pubdate: Sun, 28 Apr 2002
Source: Post-Star, The (NY)
Page: B1
Copyright: 2002 Glens Falls Newspapers Inc.
Contact:  http://www.poststar.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1068
Author: Will Doolittle
Note: Will Doolittle is the Post-Star's features editor; column is regular
Sunday feature and runs on the front page of the "Local - Region" section,
Section B, in the left-hand column above the fold.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/bush.htm (Bush, George)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

Commentary

PRESIDENT GOT IT ALL WRONG

There he was on the front page of The Post-Star, eyeing the splitting maul 
in his hand like it was some fascinating foreign implement.

Behind him were some of the people of Wilmington, and they were eyeing 
President Bush in the same way he was looking at that maul.

They were thinking about which way they should duck if he actually swung 
that thing.

But they were smiling through their fear, trying to act right in the 
presidential presence.

The whole presidential promenade into the chilly heart of Essex County must 
have been very confusing for the people who live there. No one famous or 
powerful goes to Wilmington, unless they're skiing at Whiteface. But here 
was the most famous and the most powerful man in the country, standing 
without a hat on in the freezing woods, snow dusting his perfect hair.

He was there for Earth Day, an event that usually passes without notice in 
Wilmington and elsewhere in Essex County.

When you're surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of forests where 
no one lives and no one wants to, Earth Day loses significance.

In Wilmington, people feel as much urgency about Earth Day as they do about 
global warming.  If January gets a few degrees warmer, good.

The least the president could have done, before coming up to our woods to 
swing some manly tools, is to get his history straight.

"In the North Country of New York, you have chosen the way of cooperation," 
he said. "You've set a standard for good conservation."

That's exactly wrong. It would be hard to find a worse example of 
cooperation on the environment than the Adirondacks.  Everything that has 
been done in the Adirondack Park to preserve its vast wilderness has been 
forced upon a small and unwilling local population by the state.

The local people have chafed under the authority of the Adirondack Park 
Ageny, rebelled against its edicts, fought its enforcement.

If cooperation was the theme, the president should have talked about the 
war on drugs when he was in Wilmington, because the one thing that state 
officials and people in the Adirondacks have worked together to get done is 
the construction of prisons.

When the state's oppressive environmental laws made it impossible for any 
other industry to locate in the Adirondacks, the people there begged for 
prisons, and the state obliged.

So perhaps next time he comes for a visit, the president can grab a rifle 
instead of a maul, and join a guard on in Dannemora or Ray Brook or Malone 
or Comstock or Moriah or Onchiota. Then it'll make sense when he talks 
about cooperation.
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MAP posted-by: Jackl