Traveling with far less secrecy than EPA chief Pruitt are Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, and Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke, all of whom are coming to speak to the Western Governors’ Association annual meeting in Rapid City this month. Acosta keynotes at 1:30 p.m. MDT on June 25; Wilson follows that day at 3:30 p.m.; Zinke speaks at Mount Rushmore at 9:15 a.m. on June 26.
Zinke could easily hustle back to Rapid to catch the South Dakota Sierra Club protest against his policies. The Sierra Club invites folks alarmed by Zinke’s pro-corporate attack on public lands, water, monuments, and wildlife to gather at Memorial Park in Rapid City at 11 a.m. June 26 to prepare for a march around downtown from noon to 4 p.m.
The Sierra Club may actually catch Zinke and some Western Governors downtown during their march: a downtown Rapid City “Brewery, Winery, and Shopping Tour” is one of four options WGA is planning for its attendees’ Tuesday afternoon entertainment. (The other options: Crazy Horse and the 1880 Train, Jeep safari to see Custer State Park Buffalo, and mountain biking on the Mickelson Trail (22 miles downhill, the agenda promises, indicating they are riding south either from Custer or from Englewood).
Zithead Zinke is just another sociopaths GOP grifter.
I will not be in town for the protest, but wrote this parody of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is your Land” for the Sierra Club protest. You can look for me singing it on youtube. Here are the words. Mark Winegar of Sierra Club liked it, as well as a Remi Bald Eagle, press sec. to the chief of the Cheyenne Sioux. If you attend, I hope a group will sing it. Music gets attention, especially a well-known melody with an important message. The media will use it. Thank you, Linda Boyle
1 Land-of-First-Nation brothers and sisters
Turtle Island, we can’t resist her —
cries to save her from de-stru-uc-tion
We are the protectors of this land.
2 From Utah’s Bear Ears and Grand Staircase
No one can ever take these places
Sacred-as-the Black Hills and Mi-Sou-oo–ri
This land was made for you and me.
3 No oil pipeline or mining venture
No climate denier or rich Koch brother
No secretary of the in-ter-i-or
Can take this land fro you and me.
4 It is not my land.
It is not your land.
We are the keepers of this great land.
We will protect its land and wa-ah-ter.
This land was made for you and me!
They are doing all in their power to shelter the oil, gas, and coal business from both old and new regulations—even if this means damage to people’s health and the environment.
It was 10 months ago that the Trump regime put a stop to the $1 million National Academy of Sciences mountaintop mining study. The research had been initiated after the Department of Environmental Protection and Bureau for Public Health of West Virginia sought help in scrutinizing evidence of added illnesses and premature deaths in parts of Appalachia where surface mining is prevalent. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/6/13/1771685/-Report-confirms-that-fossil-fuel-tools-at-Interior-Dept-nixed-coal-health-study-with-no-good-reason
“By refusing to listen to independent science, the secretary is abdicating his legal responsibility to protect our health and safety.”
“Katharine MacGregor, Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals, “met well over 100 times with extractive industry groups or representatives between January of 2017 and January of 2018.” She subsequently made decisions that affected the companies she had met with. She made suspending the coal study a priority.
In the months leading up to the cancellation, her calendar shows that she had no fewer than six meetings with the most powerful mining players in the country. In both April and May of 2017, she met with the National Mining Association. In March and June, meanwhile, she met with Arch Coal, a long-time practitioner of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.
It looks like both Big Oil (and Tobacco in the past), is reversing tactics.
After fossil fuel industry and Big Tobacco lost their attempts to disguise any investigation into their wrong doing, including fraud, as a First amendment violation,…
ExxonMobil and its allies on Capitol Hill — a coterie of GOP legislators who have received political contributions from the oil industry — have attempted to stop the AGs’ fraud probe by claiming the investigation is a violation of the company’s First Amendment rights.
and this:
The ruling dashed efforts by Big Tobacco to find legal cover under the First Amendment, which just happens to be the same strategy that ExxonMobil and its GOP allies are currently using to defend the company against allegations of fraud.
…it appears the goal now is to silence dissent by erasing any evidence proving the damage they cause to the environment.
os calls such media radical leftist propaganda. pfsssttt!!
Good lyrics Ms. Boyle. Thanks for your concern and commitment.