Okay, so in fairness the Overstock Company has backed off of their "in our face" sexual innuendo, but they did start it. And what they started today makes that whole tacky marketing failure look like genius in comparison.
For the life of me, I can't understand how a glorified "salvage/surplus" consumer goods web based retailer made the decision to put itself in the middle of the "The Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act, (HB148)" controversy. Some might think that it would make more sense to establish a solid track record of profitability before diving off of the deep end of wing nuttery political activism. Or maybe they're putting heavy ad dollars into something like Limbaugh, and it's working real well for them.
Who knows?
The Op Ed page of The Salt lake Tribune this morning is carrying a full opinion piece by Jonathan E. Johnson III, President of Utah based Overstock.com Inc. entitled "Utah Deserves To Own, Operate Federal lands". I sense that this issue may be less familiar elsewhere than it is to my fellow Utahns, but the state legislature passed last year, and the Governor signed, legislation demanding the turn over of the vast majority of public lands in Utah to state government. Backing up this unique ultimatum was an allocation for, and instruction to, the Attorney General to enforce in Federal Court hitherto undiscovered violations of the right of the citizens of Utah to have the feds, basically, get the hell out of our way, and off of our property. All of these years, according to this argument, ownership of some 60% of the land surface of the State of Utah has been legally vested in state government, and no one noticed.
Such attaraction as there is to the argument stems from the fact that major public land holdings are really non-existent east of the Rockies, and then the logic breaks down from there. The legal notes to HB148 stated that it was a total non-starter, but, hey, the guy that wrote it is a lawyer too so that should be good for something. And he's a right wing Republican Legislator so what the hell difference does reality make anyway. I mean, this shit is so crazy that almost on one else even on the fringe right has signed on to it. Oh, and I hope that I've made it abundantly clear that, as the concept goes, there is no need for Utahns to compensate the 300,000,000 of our fellow Americans who may once have thought that they had some small ownership in what everyone else has always believed were "Federal lands". Yeah, you guys all paid to build the infrastructure, etc. that makes these lands currently vauable, but, hey, screw ya! We're Utahns, and we don't play that shit.Three hundred million dollars out of last years budget, alone, for managing these lands? Suckers!
Now that, rhetorically, we're close enough to the garbage can to smell the stench, I'll lift the lid and give you a glimpse of what is really inside. "The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently testified to Congress that there is more recoverable oil in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming than all of the rest of the world combined", openly opined Mr. Johnson. In other words, what originally looked like only attempted theft on a monumental scale now turns out to be a pipe dream of pulling off the biggest heist in history. And all without firing a shot (not counting the blanks that the Utah A.G. would be firing in federal court.) So now compound everything by an open willingness, even an avid desire to aggravate golbal warming by combusting, say, one third of more than one half of all the remaining petroleum on the planet.
And, after today, this message is is apparently being brought to you by Overstock.com. Unbuilding American one piece at a time.