A very nice rich lady in Maine, Roxanne Quimby, wants to donate 70,000 acres (that’s a lot) of scenic, forested land, along with $40,000,000, to create a National Park. Donate. As in give. For free. One would think everybody would be happy with that. One would be wrong.
Maine Woods National Park (proposed) in Autumn
The Republican party of Maine, led by Governor Pepe le Pew Paul LePage, objects very strongly to this park. “Our forest needs to be a working forest. I’m all for conservation. I’m against preservation,” he said. Now, I’m not sure I understand the difference between conservation and preservation, but it’s clear that LePage (you may remember him as the one who ordered a mural removed from the Maine headquarters of the Department of Labor because it depicted laborers) is not happy with trees being preserved when they could be chopped down, for money.
What’s even more shocking is that he’s not alone in his anti-tree stance. Maine’s two Republican Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who are often trotted out as examples of “reasonable Republicans” by those people who desperately want to believe that there is such a thing, are also opposed, as is the Republican controlled state legislature.
They say they don’t want decisions about Maine land in the hands of a bunch of Washington bureaucrats. Seriously.
The only decisions that get made about National Parks are how much to charge for camping and whether or not to allow snowmobiles. It’s not really a serious threat to the local way of life.
Then, of course, there’s the jobs argument. If they are allowed to cut down trees, then people will have jobs cutting down trees. For as long as there are trees, anyway.
But a National Park would bring in tourists and that also creates jobs. (Did I mention that it is Quimby’s land and she is offering to give it to the federal government, free of charge? Plus $40,000,000?)
They’re not interested in that. Let’s face it. These people are not interested in creating jobs. They just hate trees and clean air and anything that is beautiful and good and nice.
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