Heritage Perfidy

 

Jon Reisman

My column this week is my submitted written testimony on Senator King’s and the Sunrise County Economic Council’s Heritage Resource bill to empower the environmental left in Washington County and reduce private ownership and control of land, as well as the Senator’s companion bill to expand Katahdin Woods and Waters in Penobscot County, also a vehicle to empower the environmental left and decrease private land ownership. The Senate committee hearing was scheduled for October 4th, but may be postponed until the lame duck session, as Senator Schumer released the Senate from all votes until after the November election.

Testimony of Jon Reisman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in Opposition to S.3932 Downeast Maine National Heritage Area and S.4784 for a 43,000 acre Katahdin Monument acquisition expansion.
Thank you for accepting this testimony, which I was unable to submit to a hearing of the National Parks subcommittee.
My name is Jon Reisman. I am an economist and policy analyst in Down East Maine. I have just retired after 38 years at the University of Maine at Machias, where I taught environmental policy as an associate professor of economics and public policy. I worked for then Governor Angus King in the 1990’s on environmental and education policy initiatives.

I am deeply dismayed that S.3932 will reintroduce National Park Service and environmental left anti-market capitalism and anti-freedom planning efforts to Washington County almost thirty years after their malign intent and plans were exposed and rejected. That this effort is being surreptitiously and dishonestly led by Senator King and a once center-right economic development non-profit is even more disappointing.

Much of Washington County is truly unaware of this effort to shackle our economic prospects and challenge any economic development that might “threaten” “heritage” resources. Current entrepreneurial efforts to expand aquaculture are the most obvious target. 30% of Washington County is already publicly owned, significantly hobbling economic development and entrepreneurial energy.

NPS Heritage planning dollars and power will go a long way towards assuring environmental left ascendency and destroying what remains of Down East independence and entrepreneurial culture. It will likely support federal and state climate alarmist goals to increase statewide public ownership to 30%, a goal to be primarily achieved by increasing public ownership in the sparsely populated rural second Congressional District, where land is cheaper and where voters in 2016 and 2020 demonstrated domestic extremist semi-fascist proclivities. A large dose of federal bureaucratic and environmental left progressive wisdom and control is clearly what is needed to address the situation.

S. 4784 would expand federal ownership of Penobscot County and the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. It confirms former Governor Percival Baxter’s conviction and fear that federal ownership in Maine would be a malignant tumor, forever expanding and choking off private ownership and control. Katahdin Woods and Waters is not an economic success story, and expanding federal holdings will not make it so. It is a monument to the vanity and hubris of the environmental left, which for 30 years has sought and continues to seek a multi-million acre Maine Woods National Park. The environmental left’s relentless drive for more public and less private ownership reveals both their anti-capitalist bias, and climate alarmism is just another symptom. What economic system is it where the government owns and controls the means of production, including land? It sure isn’t capitalism.

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here, or to him directly via email at [email protected].

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