Wall Street investment funds took control of Oregon’s private forests. Now, wealthy timber corporations reap the benefits of tax cuts that have cost rural counties billions.
By Tony Schick (OPB) and Rob Davis/The Oregonian and Lylla Younes/ProPublica (OPB) | 11 June 2020
OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING — A few hundred feet past the Oregon timber town of Falls City, a curtain of Douglas fir trees opens to an expanse of skinny stumps.
The hillside has been clear-cut, with thousands of trees leveled at once. Around the bend is another clear-cut nearly twice its size, then another, patches of desert brown carved into the forest for miles.
Logging is booming around Falls City, a town of about 1,000 residents in the Oregon Coast Range. More trees are cut in the county today than decades ago when a sawmill hummed on Main Street and timber workers and their families filled the now-closed cafes, grocery stores and shops selling home appliances, sporting goods and feed for livestock.
But the jobs and services have dried up, and the town is going broke. The library closed two years ago. And as many as half of the families in Falls City live on weekly food deliveries from the Mountain Gospel Fellowship.
“You’re left still with these companies that have reaped these benefits, but those small cities that have supported them over the years are left in the dust,” Mac Corthell, the city manager, said.
For decades, politicians, suit-and-tie timber executives and caulk-booted tree fallers alike have blamed the federal government and urban environmental advocates for kneecapping the state’s most important industry.
Timber sales plummeted in the 1990s after the federal government dramatically reduced logging in national forests in response to protests and lawsuits to protect the northern spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act and other conservation laws. The drop left thousands of Oregonians without jobs, and counties lost hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.
But the singularly focused narrative, the only one most Oregonians know, masked another devastating shift for towns like Falls City.
Wall Street real estate trusts and investment funds began gaining control over the state’s private forestlands. They profited at the expense of rural communities by logging more aggressively with fewer environmental protections than in neighboring states, while reaping the benefits of timber tax cuts that have cost counties at least $3 billion in the past three decades, an investigation by OPB, The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica found. […]
The meme phrases ‘muh free markets’ and ‘muh capitalism’ were invented to ridicule the kind of thinking/policy that makes outrages like this possible — addressing/controlling this sort of excess (among others, e.g. censorship and the development of a corporate oligarchy) by big capital is part of the NJP’s platform/reason for existence:
National Justice Party
On Telegram: Telegram/NationalJusticeParty
Well eah, I took a look and I can understand why you like their platform; however, I read this one:
https://nationaljusticeparty.com/2021/05/06/yes-the-cia-is-woke-what-are-we-gonna-do-about-it/
and it is just not for me. From my humble perspective the guy is “missing the boat” on the topic, but I did want you to know that I gave it a look and still respect:
That you put the link up here
and
2, That you like the way they are headed
Best,
SC
“Wall Street real estate trusts and investment funds began gaining control over the state’s private forestlands. They profited at the expense of rural communities by logging more aggressively with fewer environmental protections than in neighboring states, while reaping the benefits of timber tax cuts that have cost counties at least $3 billion in the past three decades, an investigation by OPB, The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica found.”
This could have and should have been fixed at the state legislative level; however, I am sure corruption and greed prohibited a solution from be ratified. This is why we need to overturn Sovereign Immunity in this nation, or the country will never (peacefully) be able to come back.
Just a humble thought…thanks for the re-post in the Around the Web Section. There are so many things that I miss, and often that section is a big help in keeping more informed.
Best,
SC
That’s the hope/objective. 🙂
Yep, corporate welfare programs are a much-ignored topic since 2013. That said, there’s also moral hazard in community welfare programs that keep people subsisting on a shoestring when it’s really time to move on to greener pastures and other opportunities, or else work aggressively toward fixing what’s inherently broken in their microeconomy. (The solution is NOT to hand over assets/natural resources to multi-national/globalist corps.) Otherwise, these little communities essentially become wards of a failed state. It’s tough love. Nobody EVER wants to talk about that.
Thanks for the reply, and I agree with you on all points.
What I had been a little more hopeful about, was when crude oil prices were rising there seemed a renewed interest, largely by entrepreneurs, in new American manufacturing. Although there did seem to be a movement beginning to form across many states, I do think that the last Presidential elections have concerned folks about the potential for onerous regulation. I am not talking about common sense policies (as we were discussing in the context of logging), but more of the bureaucracy that results in big business pushing for a NAFTA, then going overseas, paying slave wages and causing the citizens of a foreign nation to want to jump off the roof of their factory (yep, I am thinking of you Apple Inc.).
Yet, what your response really got me thinking of (for some reason) is the whole WALL issue at our borders. While I do think it is important for any nation to have sound immigration practices and policies; I often have this other thought about the whole issue:
Had we (the United States) not messed with Central and South American nations since the end of the 19th century, through to the present day; would the citizens of these nations really wish to leave their homes and risk life / limb to sneak into the U.S.?
In fact as many of us know by our encounters with newly arrived visitors (since they may or may not stay, I will use “visitor” as opposed to other words here), many of these individuals talk about “their country” or “my country” and they do not mean the United States of America. Often these folks are working hard and sending back a large portion of their salaries to help out family and friends in dysfunctional economies.
Yet, I will often recommend to other Americans (family and friends) who have not saved much for retirement and / or have other situations that affect overall income (a disability, a trade that is no longer being supported in the U.S., and similar situations) that they may wish to consider leaving our nation and moving south.
If an individual has worked much of their lives, then for the moment they still should be receiving Social Security (at a minimum). In some nations, that monthly payment is more than most folks can earn in several months (economies of scale and fluctuations of currency). Therefore a U.S. citizen could live in one of the very peaceful nations for quite a reasonable outlay of spending and (generally) have a much better life in their older years, than they could have in the United States.
So in essence we can all just trade places. Central and South America can send their youth up here to try an keep this ship afloat and we can send our retirees down there for “fun in the sun”. = ) I am already stocking a huge amount of sun tan lotion to bring with me!