Environmentalists, to their surprise, found that timber and mining were easier on the countryside.

“Now that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we’re kind of missing the loggers,” said Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit that studies land management in the West. “A clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes, that’s going to be that way forever.

“It’s kind of the ugly face of the new economy.”

Almost two years ago I wrote about a paper production company that was converting its tree-growing land into residential and commercial development. Development became more profitable for them than growing trees for paper. Perhaps that was partly due to environmentalist campaigns to reduce paper consumption.

My point was that quite often these feel-good activities end up producing the opposite of the desired results. Looks like they’re discovering this to be true in Montana.

Let’s see now. If those gun-control nuts out there manage to overcome their latest setback and get guns outlawed in the USA, how would they enforce it? Well, they could take their lead from the anti-drug crowd and launch a Gun War. But they probably won’t call it that because it sounds too much like what they want to prevent (and some blogger might compare it to the Drug War).

No matter what it’s called though the government will be faced with the same kind of problems it faces in the Drug War, the principal one being that they can’t win. People like Estrich can debate gun-control all they want but there is one fact they can’t argue away: This country will never be free of guns, like it is not free of drugs despite the decades-long war on drugs. Guns, like drugs, are too easy to make or acquire. Estrich probably doesn’t realize that anyone with a few tools and an instruction manual can make a gun and its ammunition. It’s not that difficult. Outlaw guns and these little shops will pop up all over the country — just like methamphetamine labs.

Think about all the controls that will have to be implemented to prevent illegal gun making. All this added to all the controls implemented to combat illegal drug making. More and more government intrusion into our lives.

You want to talk about gun accidents today, Susan? Okay, but let’s also talk about the potential accidents from the use of guns and ammunition built by amateurs. Life is risky. If we use safety as a principal criterion almost everything we have or do will need to be outlawed.

You want a war on guns? You’ll get a war with guns. Criminal elements, domestic and foreign, will run rampant in a national gun-free zone. You think the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois massacres were bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet!

And there’s this other little fact that Barack ignores. The government profits a lot more than the oil companies from each gallon of fuel sold. Some estimates show the government profiting three times as much. Do you think Barack will levy a windfall profits tax on the government?

Since I was a teenager the percent increase in the cost of a Coca-Cola is as much or more than a gallon of fuel. And it has been reported that Coca-Cola’s profit rate last year was greater than the oil companies’ profit rates (where profit rate is roughly defined as the amount of profit divided by the amount of money invested in making that profit.) But we don’t hear any calls from Barack for a windfall profits tax on Coca-Cola.

Some people point out that the concern is about the “obscene” amount of the oil company profits, not the profit rate. Well, that’s like complaining to a bank that your neighbor is making more off his savings than you although both of you are getting the same interest rate, while ignoring the fact that your neighbor has ten times as much money in his account as you have in yours.

It is also argued that the focus is on the oil companies because their products are essential to our everyday lives and products like Coca-Cola are not. Well genius, that is why the oil companies’ gross revenues and profits are huge compared to companies like Coca-Cola. In times of shortages it is easier to do without Coke than fuel.

It is also worth noting that liberal Democrats will argue at the same time that oil is essential to our everyday lives and that we should implement extreme measures to limit its supply.

A mortgage aid plan is on track for passage in the Senate as soon as today. The massive foreclosure rescue bill cleared a key Senate test yesterday by an overwhelming margin, with Democrats and Republicans both eager to claim election-year credit for helping hard-pressed homeowners.

The mortgage aid plan would let the Federal Housing Administration back $300 billion in new, cheaper home loans for an estimated 400,000 distressed borrowers who otherwise would be considered too financially risky to qualify for government-insured, fixed-rate loans.

So all those people who have already demonstrated that they are poor risks for loans are going to get another loan backed by you and me. The Senate wants the loans to go as high as $625,000 and the House wants to up that to $730,000. Think about that. If someone with a bad credit rating wants to spend nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to buy a house, you and I are going to be forced to guarantee them a loan — if the House has its way. President Bush has said that he will veto the bill if it is passed, but that is because he doesn’t like some of its provisions.

Some of the lawmakers are pushing to make the bill revenue neutral. But who believes that will happen? If a lot of the “400,000 distressed borrowers” weren’t expected to default on their loans they wouldn’t need to have the tax-payers backing them.

What this bill is really about is a way for a bunch of well-connected builders to get rid of their over-built inventory of over-priced houses. What a stroke of political genius! Use tax-payer money to reward big reelection campaign donors and buy the votes of over-indulgent borrowers at the same time. I’m still looking for the day when such strategies backfire, but I’m afraid I’m looking in vain.

I received an e-mail from you asking me to donate to John McCain’s campaign. My position is very simple. Get McCain to change his mind and commit to extracting oil from ANWR and the lower Gulf of Mexico and I will make a very generous donation to his campaign.

This week he stated that he favors letting the states decide if they want to allow oil exploration and extraction off their shores and that he would reconsider his opposition to drilling in ANWR. That’s not quite what I asked for but it’s close enough. I’m not under any pretense that my message alone caused McCain to change his mind but I feel that I should hold up my end of the bargain.

Here’s my next challenge for McCain. Make this announcement in a major speech and I will make a second contribution of double the amount of the first one: 

As President you will oppose the revival of the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill and that you will veto it if it is passed by Congress. You have reconsidered the pros and cons of the bill and you now feel that the cons outweigh the pros. Chief among the cons is the devastating economic effect on the poor working class.

I have e-mailed the text of this post to the GOP.

On a related note, I heard Barack Obama criticizing McCain’s revised stance on oil drilling. He said that drilling offshore and in ANWR won’t lower fuel prices today, tomorrow, next week, next year or even in five years. Well Barack, what about in six years or ten years? Even at my age I think I might need some fuel ten years from now and would like to think I’ll be able to afford it on my fixed retirement income. I thought leadership was about where we’re going, not where we are.