The Wilderness Act is 40 years old

And the environmentalists are celebrating, appropriately, in Washington, D. C. Those of us who see the future of our communities being dried up by the effects of "environmental" laws, are not celebrating.

Terry Tempest Williams is the poster girl for the pseudo-religious nature of the greens. She loves to wax poetic over wilderness, probably because she's never been stuck out in it without water or a horse. She says things like, "Without wilderness we will lose our humanity." Of course, she's a child of privilege who never had to worry about the price of beef. Anybody who believes that America's or Utah's economic base is making rock climbing gear, has no understanding of what really drives an economy. Ask the people in Utah County how their economy has been since Geneva Steel closed.

I realized 20 some years ago that these red rock vistas are still wilderness because that is their essence. They are harsh dry desert that no one was able to homestead. Everytime I see an old John Ford movie with settlers whose farms are set in Monument Valley, I have to laugh. They wouldn't last 10 days down there. There's no water.
There isn't anything else but scenery to speak of. Where I live the economy is based on coal mining, and that wouldn't be much good if it weren't for the fact that we have a number of power generating plants which add value to the coal by converting it to electricity before it leaves the area.

John Kerry is constantly moaning about the loss of jobs in this country. Why doesn't he support the repeal of idiotic laws that prevent our use of our own natural resources? The Escalante-Grand Staircase Monument created by Bill Clinton in Southern Utah sits on billions of tons of low sulfur coal which are now off limits to mining. These aren't strip mining opportunities. They can be developed without harming the scenery, but that isn't what the environmentalist care about. They don't want any more growth in this country. How can a candidate who supports laws that prevent economic growth keep attacking Bush for now creating enough jobs?