Uh oh: looks like Rep. Kristi Noem is going to have to ask for more federal government spending. With climate change expanding the wildfire season, Congress hasn't been allocating enough money to fight wildfires. This year the Forest Service ran out of fire-fighting cash, and Congress had to pour in an extra $400 million to pay the bills.
But consider this: in 2009, Congress (the Democratic Congress, the one that got things done) created the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act. Previously, when the wildfires would burn up the firefighting budget, Congress would cover the difference by raiding the forest management funds that were supposed to be used to prevent fires. The FLAME Act created a reserve fund where any firefighting funds not used in one year could be rolled over for use in subsequent more fiery years.
But then came Kristi Noem with her fiscal sense:
...in 2011, Congress went right in after it, taking at least $200 million from the fund and placing into the general treasury to use for other expenditures.
"It defeats the purpose of FLAME," Topik, a former staff member for the House Appropriations Committee, said of the Forest Service. "It's a peculiar history that this emergency activity is funded this way" [Darryl Fears, "U.S. Runs out of Funds to Battle Wildfires," Washington Post, October 7, 2012]
And we're back to raiding fire-prevention funds to pay for fighting fires.
Dear lovers of the Black Hills: if you want the Forest Service to have the tools to keep this jewel of the West from burning up, you'd better tell your Congresswoman to stop voting for short-sighted fire prevention policies.
Or you could just vote to fire her and hire a Congressman who knows better.
Just took a big loop from Rapid City to Hulett and Moorcroft then back to Custer and Hill City: the bug has taken all the Central Hills' ponderosa pine now almost all dead.
Time, the avenger.
The fires north of Newcastle and near Osage have started to restore that section of the Hills to aspen: next Spring will find all that electric green.
The Forest Service is engaged in structure protection and not fire-fighting so budget considerations should be more proactive rather than emergency management.
ICYMI: Hot Springs fire manager, Bill Gabbert appeared with host, Dick Gordon on the second segment archived at The Story.
There is an entire sector of job creation that is being ignored: professional fire companies, firms that would do assessment of fuel loads and burn whole stands of pine on private ground.
Wind Cave and Jewel Cave look great: the feds know how if they would just talk to one another.
West River ranchers should be assisted by local VFDs to burn their stubble: it's a public safety issue now.
South Dakota suffers from a lack of executive leadership.
Next year, Marty Jackley can sue the feds for not acting now just like he is after the state's failure of leadership during the flood of 2011.
Burning the West might be a good way for the 842nd to unwind.
http://www.na.fs.fed.us/fire_poster/nativeamer.htm
With Ms. NOem, we are not getting anything that we did not expect. Ms. NOem is very much like Mitt Romney in that they have never seen a subject that could not lie about and then lie about the lie that started the lie in the first place. Confused? That is what makes the whole scheme of theirs work. In the meantime, we may even have fires in that forest in the winter time, now that would be difficult at best to fight and possible because of all the fuel. We have tried her direction and her direction does not work. Time for someone who will do something for South Dakota and it sure ain't Ms. NOem.
GOP now has two big plans:
1. Drill Baby, Drill
2. Burn Baby, Burn.
10/08/2012 - As a combat veteran of two tours in Vietnam with twenty-two years of service as a Republican member of the U.S. House and Senate, I endorse President Barack Obama for a second term as our Commander-in-Chief. Candidates publicly praise our service members, veterans and their families, but President Obama supports them in word and deed, anywhere and every time.
From Larry Pressler, we should all give thanks for Republicans with common sense.
Thanks Jerry!
Here's a link to Senator Pressler's endorsement. Love the reference to the 47% and his fear of the right's embrace of extreme ideologies and faux support of the military.
I would suggest that anyone who is a veteran, family of a veteran or a citizen who appreciates their sacrifice and service read what Sen. Pressler has to say on this subject.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-pressler/larry-pressler-obama_b_1948415.html
P.S. Has anyone asked Thune or Noem why they continue to vote against veterans, yet show up for photo ops and use the military for their own political purposes.
Guessing our state's political reporters will have comments on Pressler's endorsement and hopefully get responses from John and Kristi.
"P.S. Has anyone asked Thune or Noem why they continue to vote against veterans"
Care to back that up? Let me guess. You are whining about the last veterans jobs bill that got shot down, even though the spending authorized in the bill violated limits that Congress agreed to last year. Not to mention, we already have 6 veteran's job training programs that we have no idea if they are working correctly. Hey, let's add one more redundant program and then people wonder why we end up wasting so much money.
Where's Timmy? Oh yeah....being a placeholder until his son is ready to take over his position. Talk about a lame duck.
yeah, Jana: screw the vets who could be helping to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure like the bridge over the Missouri between Ft. Pierre and the red-washed edifice on the other side of it.
Many returning vets are part of engineers' battalions: Oahe needs to be dredged, dams decommissioned and updated with small hydro.
So use the 6 existing programs....unless you are saying they aren't working? If that is the case, scrap them and let's put something in there that works. It's idiotic to just create another, and then another, and then another just because it feels good. Most of these programs are nothing more than people trying to do something for veterans just so they can say...."hey, I helped the vets". It's political fodder. Nothing looks better for the Dems than saying the Repubs hate veterans. That most recent bill was nothing more than a ploy to make Repubs look bad and it appears the lemmings fell for it.
So this is the left pandering to the 11% of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are unemployed? I'm thinking it's more of a we'll block anything that could possibly be interpreted as good for Obama.
As one of the bipartisan sponsor's of the bill, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Washington) said, “A vote to support this point of order says that despite the fact that we have paid for this bill, despite the fact that one in four young veterans are out of work, despite the fact that veterans suicides are outpacing combat deaths, and despite the fact that more and more veterans are coming home, we are not going to invest in these challenges.â€
DB, your party spent 3 trillion on a war of choice and now $1 billion to help the men and women the Republicans sent to war without adequate body armor or up-armored vehicles is too much?!?
You tell the veterans and their families that one...should go over big.
“The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans were treated and appreciated by their nation.†- George Washington.
"A vote to support this point of order says that despite the fact that we have paid for this bill"
Complete BS. The bill was not paid for. They were trying to use fees on medicare providers and suppliers to support it. I guess if we are going in debt at a tune of $1.5 trillion per annum, we sure have the cash.
The other thing she failed to mention is that congress had already agreed on spending limits. Not to mention, the 6 other bills already passed that can't be proven to be working. You know what they call doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Half of our spending problem in this country is due to duplicate legislation and overlapping of services. Sure, let's add one more to the 6 we already passed. Brilliant!
I'll gladly tell them, along with the majority of active veterans that support Mitt. I'd tell them we are going to get rid of these BS programs and put in one large one that works. This way, they don't have to run around playing the gov't game of trying to figure out which one to use.
Then, you have Larry talking about jobs that it wouldn't even cover. That must mean he agrees with me that this bill is not needed and maybe something should be done with the last 6.
Fire management is headed for Homeland Security and out of the Forest Service budget.
Sure, some of us Democrats are frustrated with the pace of determining what the habitat looked like before Columbus as a work in policy progress: it's excruciating.
Jana, both parties signed on for these wars regardless of corruption possibilities. Corrupt book keeping of the war expenses couldn't have happened had they all not run right out for the pork of the war machine.
Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon......where are we at Jana?
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-september-20-2012/screwing-private-ryan
Yes they did Les. As usual, truth was the first victim of war.
As far as the countries you mention, I hope and pray that we don't follow the false drum beats and empty platitudes that led us to the last two wars.
Certainly Jana and Les the Iraq war was intramental in leading into the Obama presidency. Instead of securing our borders, setting up proper radiation detection at every port and putting secure sensors and alarms that provide situational awareness, including radar, automatic identification system, or AIS; high-definition infrared cameras; biometric-based access control and intrusion protection equipment at all border crossings we saw the pork roll out to gather votes for war machine dollars. Obama just sends out dollars to gather votes for himself. There is a big difference.
Charlie Hoffman, are you serious or is your last post satire?
That last post might not be the real Mr. Hoffman.
tales of hoffman....
Douglas Wiken, deadly serious!
"The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany."
Just flip the two isms and Voila! Amerika!
Statehood for the tribes and Mexico.
Mexican statehood for the tribes.
LK: some more on the tribes and US Senate race here.
Easy Doug, Grudz and Larry.
Let Charlie have his say. He's not alone, I remember when Peter King (R-NY) hammered certain members of Congress for cutting the very monies that would fund Charlie's wish list.
"Representative Peter King (R – New York), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, blasted the GOP’s plan to reduce the budget by $61 billion, citing cuts to critical anti-terror programs.
In particular, King is concerned about the reductions to grants designated to protect ports and transit facilities. He believes these cutbacks would leave the United States less secure and could lead to a devastating terrorist attack. He said, “We’re not talking about earmarks. We’re not talking about sweetheart contracts. We’re talking about life and death.â€
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/king-blasts-gop-transportation-security-cuts
Oh yeah, Charlie probably even knew that Kristi Noem voted for those cuts...ooops.
Hey Charlie, remember that time that President Bush tried to outsource our port security here in the US to a company owned by the government of Dubai? You just can't make this stuff up.
You missed "the war in Iraq", which nearly all spending can be attributed to George Bush. I've said many times Bush should have listened to Powell and not Cheney for a mulitude of reason's including those above.
Problem with not listening to Cheney, you could get dead in a hurry.
Dick appears to have carried the water for the war machine which for years beyond imagination has supplied both sides.
Another Cheney deal most likely Rorschach. Dick was burning up the jet fuel between Saudi and home early on developing that relationship.
Powell truly would have been the man to listen to.
I left the Republican Party because Bush the Elder didn't deploy the Powell Doctrine and march on Baghdad during the first Gulf War.
Bush 41 said when if we take out Saddam we will end up with a dozen or so little Saddam's and the country will end up fragmented into dozens of hot spot deadly dictatorships. Bush 43 proved him right.
The seeds of insurgency grew into the first WTC blast: had the Powell Doctrine been applied the No Fly Zone would have been averted.
and would have sent a stronger signal to a crumbling Yugoslavia.
??? Both Larry and Cory used to be GOPers?
Man, when you guys flip, you flip HARD. LOL
Holy Cow Larry, your dad would be proud of you!
Breaking through denial is your first step back.
Greed doesn't always equal good, Bill.
Ever wonder why pine beetles proliferate on roads to sawmills?
http://ncfp.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/are-we-giving-insects-and-beetles-a-free-ride/