Un­heard-of and un­der­re­ported move

The Washington Times Weekly - - Letters To The Editor -

Ru­mors that the Obama Ad­min­is­tra­tion would re­act to the Nov. 2 elec­tions by cir­cum­vent­ing Congress were not ex­ag­ger­ated. As one ex­am­ple, sneaked into the preThanks­giv­ing news dump, wit­ness the se­ta­side of 187,000 square miles of Alaska as es­sen­tial to po­lar bear breed­ing and habi­tat.

It’s hard to grasp the enor­mity of that land­grab, which will re­strict oil ex­plo­ration and drilling as well as other ac­tiv­i­ties. Choose one of these com­par­isons, depend­ing on where you live: 5 Maines, 4 Penn­syl­va­nias 3 Flori­das 70% of Texas More than Ne­braska and South Dakota com­bined

Or Mon­tana or Cal­i­for­nia

2 of ev­ery 7 acres in Alaska.

The In­te­rior Depart­ment’s fish, wildlife and parks arm did this de­spite data show­ing sig­nif­i­cant gains in po­lar bear pop­u­la­tion over a decade or longer. As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Tom Strick­land claimed it would help to stave off ex­tinc­tion.

I be­lieve this to be a pre-emp­tive strike at re­source devel­op­ment in our rich­est state, crip­pling this nation rel­a­tive to Rus­sia, China, Saudi Ara­bia and Brazil, for ex­am­ple, where fewer foibles ex­ist. First it was the Gulf of Mex­ico, and now it’s Alaska, caus­ing the off­shoring of jobs by an ad­min­is­tra­tion that hyp­o­crit­i­cally vil­i­fies cor­po­ra­tions that do like­wise in re­sponse to heavy govern­ment reg­u­la­tion and tax­a­tion here. Barry J. Mitchel Portsmouth, Vir­ginia

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