Spending Lessons

I may be getting a chunk of tax-cut money back from the government in the near future. Since taxation is ostensibly a tool for improving society, I'm going to redirect it to something the government can't be bothered to support, like homeless shelters. It would be great if some group were accepting tax-cut checks and notifying the Shrub (maybe a nice postcard?) that there are Americans who aren't soulless materialists. I'd like to invite everyone who complains that the government doesn't know how to spend money to show them how to do it.

Sincerely Yours,

Michael Schuler, Another goddamn tax-and-spend liberal, via e mail

More similiar than we want to admit, actually

Upon browsing PBS.ORG's website on the NOVA presentation "Holocaust on Trial," I came upon this Timeline of Nazi abuses in October of 1933:

"October 24: Nazis pass a law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals that justifies placing the homeless, beggars, unemployed, and alcoholics in concentration camps." Sounds similar to Sidran's Anti-Civility laws.

--Daemien, via e-mail

CUH, GMO, ELF and the Big Picture

Dear ETS! Editors and Maria Tomchick,

In response to your recent front page article entitled ELF Sets a Fire at the UW: I have been reading ETS for six years and have always found your articles informative, factual and have always appreciate your candid reporting; for that reason, I feel especially obligated to set the record straight. As an ecologist specializing in restoration ecology and past student of the College of Forest Resources and Center for Urban Horticulture, I was devastated to learn that the research of my advisor Tom Hinckley was lost, as his office was located directly above Toby Bradshaw's.

I think it is incredibly important to remember that the poplars that Toby Bradshaw has developed reach harvest age in 1/6 the time it takes for Douglas fir to mature. This means that the wood volume produced by an acre of poplars is 600% greater from a given area of land. If genetically engineered poplars can take 5 out of 6 acres out of timber production and allow those acres to revert to old-growth, fragmentation of the landscape, probably the most dire problems facing conservationists, can be remedied.

The real question here is whether the demand for paper is the causal factor behind the push for genetically engineered trees, if so then the target of the ELF should be companies that produce products with excess packaging, large timber companies and people who don't recycle. Currently the majority of paper products come from second growth timber which is dismally horrible habitat for virtually all species except Douglas-fir. Most of these areas, even on public lands, are replanted with genetically engineered Douglas-fir seedlings that have been developed by the same timber companies that fund Bradshaw's work. I don't see them addressing that problem. Probably 30% of the landscape in Washington State has been planted with Douglas-fir seedlings that have been selected for straight trunks and even branching patterns (morphological homogeneity), fast growth rates, high survival rates in clear-cut conditions and poor soils, and disease resistance. This is nothing new, still disturbing, but regulations are consistently improving over time.

While I maintain that all publicly held lands should be designated for recreational and wildlife reserves and should not be used for timber production at all and privately held lands need to be managed responsibly, private land owners currently have the right to manage their lands within current environmental regulations. Our current property tax structure requires landowners to pay taxes on the potential profit (standing live trees) as well as sales tax upon the sale of timber, thus land owners must produce some revenue from their property unless they can afford to pay taxes out of pocket or they relinquish all rights to management of their property in the form of a conservation easement. Most times small land owners cannot adsorb the increased costs associated with additional environmental regulations and are forced to sell their land. Usually larger timber companies buy their land. Many of these smaller landowners do not use GMO seed sources, it's the big boys that are the culprits here, not the professors providing the tools.

For all practical purposes, CUH was destroyed because all the professors' offices and research labs were torched and rendered unusable. Merrill Hall WAS CUH, the purpose of CUH was education and research. How can professors educate and do research if all their research, equipment and offices don't exist anymore? Also, six semi truck loads of garbage had to be removed from the site after the fire. The vast majority of this material was not recyclable and ended up in a landfill. Go ELF!

Assuming that stupidity led these professors to back up their research on site is a base argument. This research was work in progress that required constant data entry and statistical analysis that needed to be done with the tools available on campus. Aside from that, no one really expects someone to burn your entire office to ashes. All of the faculty at CUH are brilliant contributors to our understanding of ecology and the sustainable management of our natural resources. Unless you live under a rock and eat cattail tubers and berries, you benefit from the work being done on college campuses across the U.S. Also, the Master Gardener's Program was almost cut this year by King County Council so if you think they'll recover without a struggle, think again.

If the arsonists really knew what they were doing, why didn't they construct a virus that would corrupt Bradshaw's data rather than risking the destruction of a wholly beneficial ecological institution. Couldn't they have managed a fire that only burned Bradshaw's office? Couldn't they have managed to avoid the mortality of their rare plant propagation research? Could they have taken the time to read the mission of CUH?

I demonstrated alongside members of ELF during WTO for several days and continue to believe that civil disobedience is a proactive approach to positively affect political and social change; however, the convoluted nature of this statement and its failure to raise awareness of GMOs in a positive way probably alienated more people than anything else. Perhaps people will view future demonstrations and actions against GMOs as associated with this act of arson and reject their message. The negative media attention only succeeded in setting the movement against GMOs back at least five years in the minds of those who would otherwise be our allies.

Besides, food is an easier GMO case to make, it's easier for people to swallow. Perhaps all these folks who demonstrate and firebomb should come volunteer with me and plant some trees. Proactive, community based approaches to environmental problems can have huge impacts when enough people get involved. It's unfortunate that these same folks probably spent days planning this event and could have planted upwards of 2000 genetically distinct trees in Seattle parks instead. Please take this response with a grain of salt; I mean no offense. Have a good day.

Morgan Malmquist Dutton, Education Program Director, Treemendous