You know, the more you look at the "environmental" movement, the more you realize it is a globalist tool. Rather than protest NASCAR or the war machine, they get all lathered up about a land give-away.
Now look, I'm for protecting the environment and against pollution and all those things; however, I'm not the one wasting time COMMITTING CRIMES!!!
"Student thwarts auction of federal land; Without cash, he bids $1.79m for Utah lands" by Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times | January 19, 2009
SALT LAKE CITY - Environmental activists were marching glumly outside the Bureau of Land Management offices here one day last month, as inside, hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine federal land were auctioned off in an eleventh-hour Bush administration effort to leave its mark on the West.
Tim DeChristopher, a 27-year-old college student, had slipped into the auction room and saw a woman he knew, a fellow environmentalist observing the event. She was weeping as Utah's wild lands were sold off parcel by parcel. DeChristopher decided he had to act. So he began bidding.
By the time officials from the Bureau of Land Management caught on, DeChristopher had bid $1.79 million he did not have to acquire the rights to 12 parcels totaling 22,000 acres. Federal authorities threatened to prosecute DeChristopher for bidding without cash in hand.
As news of DeChristopher's actions spread, he promptly raised enough for a first payment. On Jan. 9, he announced he had at least $45,000, mostly donated in $5 or $10 increments by thousands of online benefactors.
A federal judge today is due to rule on a lawsuit filed by environmental groups to nullify the lease sales. But DeChristopher and his supporters hope that, should that last-ditch legal effort fail, the money he has raised will delay a final decision on the fate of "his" parcels until the inauguration of Barack Obama, whose aides have criticized how the current administration fast-tracked the auction.
"I had really prepared myself for the worst. I was thinking three to five years in prison; that's what I'm looking at," DeChristopher said in an interview. "Now things are looking more positive. The fate of that land will either be decided by me or by the Obama administration."
An agency spokeswoman said that DeChristopher's offer of payment is too little, too late. Mary Wilson said he owed $81,000 on the day of the sale and significantly more by Jan. 6. "Since he made up his rules for the auction," she said, "he's making up his rules on how to pay for it."
The agency hasn't decided whether the parcels legally belong to DeChristopher. That will be determined by the investigation the agency is conducting with the US attorney's office here. Until that inquiry is concluded, DeChristopher's legal status, and that of the parcels he bid for, is in limbo. Regardless of the outcome, the soft-spoken DeChristopher has become a sudden celebrity on the environmental circuit.
"The guy just showed incredible chutzpah," said Dan Hamburg, a former Northern California congressman who is executive director of Voice of the Environment, which donated $5,000 to DeChristopher. "I hope he's inspired a lot of other people to take similar action."
Yeah, if you are INSPIRED to take the RIGHT ACTIONS, huh?
I guess WRONG ACTIONS are PROTESTING the WARS and the ISRAELI GENOCIDE of PALESTINIANS!
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DeChristopher had an economics exam at the University of Utah that morning. The final question was whether the prices paid at the auction would represent the true cost of energy exploration. The answer, he wrote, was no - they would not take into account the environmental and public health impact of fossil fuels. Then he went to the BLM office to join the picket line.
The scene "was like a funeral march," DeChristopher said. He decided to enter the building, hoping to disrupt the proceedings.
Oh, he's a PROVOCATEUR, is he?
An official inside asked him if he was there for the auction. Why, yes, DeChristopher responded. Are you a bidder? she asked.
Yes, DeChristopher said.
He was handed a small laminated card with his number, 70, on it, and ushered into the auction room. After making a few bids to drive up the energy companies' costs, he decided to bid for as many parcels as he could.
"I sat there watching one parcel after another going into the hands of oil developers, and I knew the land would be pretty much ruined," he said. "I got to the point where I couldn't sit there and watch anymore."
He got to 12 before agency officers ushered him into a rear room for questioning. Officials said that when DeChristopher had identified himself as a bidder, he signed a form vowing to pay all necessary fees that day. He said he had no intent to pay. They ejected him from the building, and the bidding resumed.
Afterward, DeChristopher was flooded with encouraging e-mails from as far away as Norway. The head of the Bureau of Land Management under President Bill Clinton, Pat Shea, offered to act as his attorney. Environmentalists took up his cause on Facebook....
Another reason to not go there. And look at the high-powered help!
DeChristopher, who shares a rented house with several roommates, is banking on a summer job with an environmental group to pay his bill. "I didn't think there was any way they could get $45,000 out of me," he said with a chuckle.
Yeah, hu-hu-hu!
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